Sunday 11th May – Wednesday 14th May – Siem Reap
So in my last entry I vowed that I would visit the temples at Angkor and I did so on the Sunday. I had originally planned to cycle to the temples but as I only had the one day (as I am allegedly in a hurry) and with the temperatures at the time, I decided to take a tuk tuk. I shared this with an Australian guy called Dane who was staying at the same guesthouse as me.
The first temple we went to was Angkor Wat, the most famous temple at Angkor and the first of the complex from the town. Angkor Wat was built in the twelfth century and you approach it across a sandstone moat crossing a broad causeway. The view was truly awesome as you saw the conical-shaped towers reaching upwards. There were plenty of internal walkways to explore, many with intricately carved murals.
The second place we visited was Angkor Thom, a collection of various Wats in a walled compound. I actually found this slightly more interesting, partly due to the greater diversity but also as there were a number of wats and buildings in a greater state of disrepair. I’ve decided that I am far less excited by buildings which have been renovated and actually quite like places which resemble more crumbly ruins. Well not completely, there were pile of brick type structures too, but when you see a temple with blocks falling off and roots poking through crevices there’s something rather evocative about it.
After Angkor Thom we went to Preah Khan which was not on the "mini-tour" but Dane had read about it and it being in the middle of the forest appealed to us. I was less excited when we arrived and another group’s guide spent a long time telling them that landmines were safe as long as you didn’t put too much weight on them…..hmmm! The temple was amazing with various routes and doorways completely blocked with fallen walls and rubble. Courtyards were a mixture of ornate carvings and carnage and the place instantly appealed to me. Dane was equally impressed with my constant referral to the place as Praga Khan and seemed (un)equally amused by my other comedic inserts which he began to refer to as my "hip-hop references". I think I was just in one of those moods, for example he would say, "Do you want to go around the outside?" and I’d say, "Round the outside, round the outside". Sorry if I’ve completely lost you here. The other habit I seemed to adopt for the day which must have been insanely annoying was asking him loads of questions which he would have no idea of the answer to. I’m not quite sure why part of my brain had decided that he was my own personal tour guide and why I thought he would know answers to things like, "What year do you think this was built?" and "Do you think this was the King’s wife’s residence?". I told him that he should simply take to furnishing me with rubbish such as, "the inner temple was built in 1132 with the outer built at a later date to house the King’s monkeys" and that I would not only probably not question him but would be very impressed. Needless to say he didn’t start answering me with nonsense but I did carry on asking ridiculous questions!
So after Praga Khan we carried on and visited three other temples. My favourites were definitely those engulfed by trees with the trees battling against the temples for space. I have some amazing photos of roots pretruding through walls and the like which I shall endeavour to upload as soon as possible.
After a day at the temples I felt it necessary to spend a night enjoying the more cultural aspects of the town so we spent another night at the guesthouse bar before heading to Temple Bar and then X-Bar. One of the bar staff at X-Bar was practising for the flairing championships (think Tom Cruise in cocktail, not on Oprah) and was pretty amazing. I then (with some encouragement) decided that it was a good time to juggle limes and promptly decided it wasn’t such a good time when one flew into Dane’s beer spilling half of it everywhere.
The Monday was going to be my last day in Siem Reap as I booked my bus ticket for the Tuesday. I spent the Monday going around the town, trying (unsuccessfully) to find a sketchbook and looking around shops. On the Tuesday I woke up with chronic period pains and decided that the last thing I wanted to do was spend 6 hours on a bus so I changed the ticket and then spent the majority of the day in bed, reading, sleeping and feeling sorry for myself.
On the Wednesday I packed up my things, said my Goodbyes to people at the hostel, staff and Siem Reap and headed to Phnom Penh on a much nicer bus than the minibuses that brought me to Siem Reap. Having said that I did have a very interesting trip to the toilet on the bus. It wasn’t actually tall enough for you to stand up and every time you thought you had sussed it the driver hit the brakes as hard as he could, probably due to more cows walking into the road. Actually I found it quite uncomfortable traveling on a double-decker bus. Not literally, it was very comfortable (other than the Cambodian Karaoke they insisted on playing for the entire journey) but in terms of the comparison between the coach and the other vehicles and places we were traveling through. A lot of the roads here are simply not designed and are not wide enough for such a vehicle and, with the South East Asian rule that the bigger you are the greater your right of way, the coach spent the whole journey beeping aggressively at villagers pulling small carts with buffalo and other people going about their daily business.
Other than the awkward attempt to use the Oompah Loompah toilet and the Cambodian Karaoke, the journey was not too painful and we arrived in Phnom Penh.