Holiday with Tess Part III- Siem Reap and one million temples

Sorry - another mammoth post...but so much to tell!

So predictably we almost missed the bus to Siem Reap. We hopped in the van at Kampong Speu and the driver insisted on kicking everyone out of the front cab and putting us in there, which made Tess feel incredibly bad. I didn’t mind cos I was sure they would have put me in the back with everyone if it was just me J We arrived about fifteen minutes before the bus departed and went on fruitless search for some lunch because we were starving (We ended up with a tin of prawn crackers and some Pringles-esque chips – little did we know that if we had turned left instead of right we would have ended up at a bakery!).

6 hours later we were in Siem Reap. Siem Reap is a lovely town, has all the conveniences of Phnom Penh but less busy. That night we met Anna (my Australian volunteer counterpart in the WFP Siem Reap office and Brett (another volunteer) and had a great dinner and crashed someone’s African themed farewell and did lots of booty dancing.

The next day we slept in and explored the town including buying tonnes of touristy stuff at market, actually most of it was quite tasteful and I love my Hanuman and Ganesh statues J. That evening I had organized a sunset wine and cheese package at one of the temples (ok well Anna had organized it but I took the credit :)). After a belated start we arrived and it was lovely, but no real view of anything but nice. The air was also incredibly still and combined with the Cambodian sun beating down all day on a stone pyramid turned us into two sweaty barangs on an open air sauna.

It was also quite funny because we had our glasses of wine on the steps where we were sitting, which was in front of an ornamental stone door. About 5 older guys came up and had a look and were talking quite openly in front of us and called over some monks who were hanging around. Tess and I started getting very worried that we had offended someone but through my broken Khmer we chatted and discovered that they thought we were making some offering to temple and were quite perplexed. We chatted some more and once they found out I was volunteering they were all over us.

The next two days were a bevy of temple hopping so it might get a little blurry. I won’t go through each one but maybe the pictures will help. But you have to experience it yourself to do it justice. They are really interesting because the government was Hindu, then Buddhist, then Hindu then back to Buddhist so there is a whole mix of different ones.

The first day we grabbed a tuk tuk and did our own tour of the big temples, with Tess wielding the Rough Guide as my tour guide :)

Angkor Wat - The main attraction of course and simply stunning. We got to climb all the way to the top up some particularly precarious stairs that a few people have fallen off and died. Because we slept in we were there in the middle of the day and it was practically empty- they close the stairs when the big tour groups come. Sure we got heatstroke, but we beat the crowds :) We also chatted to a few of the sellers which was lots of fun and inevitably ended up buying a tonne more stuff (anyone want a silk bed sheet?).

Bayon- Hundreds of faces :) This temple is the best for exploring as there are tonnes of nooks, crannies and different levels.

It was here after about 6 or 7 offerings to Buddha statues (along with donation) that we began Buddha watch, spying round corners to see if there was another old woman waiting for us to bestow Buddha’s blessings. We thought seven blessings was enough.

Ta Prohm is especially nice as it has been preserved with the jungle growing inside it. Made famous in Tomb Raider I believe. Here we got sprung for Buddha's blessing again, but this time we got an orange piece of string for our wrists, which meant we would never have to pay again!

The next day we went on an organized tour that would take us a little further out than the main areas. The highlight was the river of 1000 lingas at Kbal Spean (linga is a phallic symbol). The trek through the forest was really nice and when we got there the place is covered in butterflies literally. There are lots of carvings in the rocks but as it had not rained for a while it was not as spectacular as it should be but still nice. And all the lingas were worn down to nubs from the river, snigger snigger.

We also visited Banteay Srei (the most intricately carved temple) and many others.

One particularly interesting one was the Bakong Temple. It has an attached Pagoda that they say 10,000 people were killed by the KR in and the bodies dumped in the moat. The monks refused to stay there because of the ghosts but they have apparently since been exorcised and it is being restored by a German group.

One night Anna cooked us dinner which was great and we made the world’s richest sticky date pudding, yum :)

After three days we hopped back on the bus bound for Phnom Penh to stay in the seedy cheap hotel before next day boarding the bus bound for Kep!