I was up really early to catch the early Bangkok Air flight from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia. I had left my two big bags at the hotel so I only had a small bag full of dirty clothes and a few clean ones. The flight was really short, actually about 45 minutes from wheels up to touch down. During that time they served a nice snack. The flight was not crowded at all, in fact I had 3 seats to myself. When we landed we walked across the tarmac to the terminal and waited in line to get my new visa. Behind the counter are about a dozen people in uniforms, you walk up and give your passport, paperwork and $20 to the first guy and he passes your passport to the next person. Eventually when your passport has worked it’s way to the last person he calls your name and hands it back to you. Then you go to immigration and get everything checked and finally you can leave. My guide Bomton was waiting for me at the exit and got my bag. The car picked us up at the curb and off we went. The hotel check in wasn’t until 2:00 and it wasn’t even 10:00 AM yet so he said we would start with a tour of some of the temples. After getting my three day parks pass we drove to Angkor Thom, South Gate.

My first sight is of a road and on either side of the road are large statues, on one side it is good spirits and on the other it is devils. Each row has about 20 statues that are in various state of damage and they are both holding a very long 7 headed snake or Naga. These date back over 1000 years and have suffered a lot of damage. Some have been repaired and some replaced but the feeling you get is of something very old and very impressive. As we walked past them and through the gates I was very impressed.  It was just like the pictures I had seen but the pictures could not begin to do justice to the size or impressiveness of what I was seeing. I doubt I can adequately describe it but I will try. Have you ever seen something that immediately makes you feel insignificant, something so impressive that you wonder what legacy you are leaving on this earth? Well that is a little how I felt when I saw the stone carving at the gate and at the Bayon temple. These are amazing places, very old, built in the 12th century by king Jayavarman VII. In fact he built most of the temples around the area and there are a lot. The temples are dedicated to Buddhism or Hinduism depending on which king built them, but one thing that they all have in common are amazing carvings on every visible surface. The temples all have a base of lava rock and then are built with pink sand stone. The stone is brought from a quarry about 40 miles away so you can imagine what a job it was to bring the stone in, yet the temples were built in less than 50 years. One of the amazing things to see is the Terrace of the Elephants. This is where the king would speak to his officers and troops before sending them off to war. It is a huge terrace surrounded by carved elephants whose trunks go down to the stone base. If his army won they would return to accolades through the regular gate but if they are defeated they return in disgrace through the Ghost gate.

After seeing that amazing place we stopped for lunch. Immediately a bunch of kids run up to you to sell you post cards, bracelets, guide books, etc. They are all over the place and quite persistent. I found out later that they have to pay the police money to sell there (police in Cambodia make a lot of money on bribes) so they need to make enough money to cover the bribe and make a profit. I had a great lunch of beef with lemongrass and drank about 2 liters of water. I may not have mentioned that it is really warm and very humid here, within about 30 seconds you are dripping with sweat. After lunch we headed back to the hotel to check in. I had a couple hours to relax before Bomton would come back to take me to see the Temple of Angkor Wat. He said it was better to see it in the afternoon with the sun lower. That was fine by me, I could use a rest. At 3:00 he arrived and off we went to Angkor Wat. This is a really big temple surrounded by a really big moat. In addition to the tons of tourists and vendors out front there were hundreds of Buddhist monks touring the site. You walk across the causeway into the temple which is surrounded by high walls. Once you get inside it is amazing, everything is carved. From the entry gate you walk down another causeway about 300 meters. On either side is open land with small stone building. The building on either side were the libraries. There are also a series of canals that I later learned were built to take the water in the rainy season and get it out of the temple and into the moat. On the left is a pond that has the reflection of the main temple in it, I had to get a picture there and then walk into the main temple. One sight that stands out in my mind is a bass relieve that covered an entire wall, I mean 12 feet high and about 2000 feet long and it was covered with the story of Vishnu fighting against the demons to rescue his concubine kidnapped by the demon king. Vishnu recruited the monkey king and his army of monkeys to fight the demons and ultimately won the battle. As you may have already guessed, give that we are taking about Vishnu, this is a Hindu temple. After being mesmerized by the bass relief we entered the inner courtyard. There rising up maybe 50 feet was the central temple. The stairs up it were very steep, in fact everyone climbing we using their hands. The steps are also narrow and about the height of two or three normal steps.  After all climbing to heaven should not be an easy task.  It looked dangerous and when I asked Bomton about this he told me that a person has fallen a couple months ago and had broken a lot of bones. Unfortunately he died on the way to the hospital.  I decided I wasn’t going to go to the top, mainly because there wasn’t much to see up there except for a better view of the temple complex.  Instead I took a few pictures of the people climbing up or slowly cautiously making their way down and contented myself with walking around it and marveling at all the detailed carvings. One motif that is everywhere around the temples of Angkor Wat are there balustrades that are made of stone carved into a very long snake or Naga. They stretch around all the terraces and along the cause ways. At the ends are there huge heads, actually 5 or 7 heads of a snake carved like it were a cobra sitting up with a wide spread hood. Most of them are damaged, badly damaged.  During the early part of the century the French removed a lot of the art work and during the civil war (1975 to 1995) a lot of the statues were stolen or damaged.   Angkor Wat was used by the rebels as a training camp and was attacked at least once as there are bullet holes in the stone walls. Most of the statues are missing their heads because they were too heavy to steal the whole thing; the thieves just broke off the heads and took those. I can only wonder what the place looked like 200 years ago, it must have been an amazing site.

From Angkor Wat we drove to the base of a hill. At the top was an old ruined temple but you could also get a very nice view of the surrounding countryside and it was a great place to watch the sunset. There were a lot of elephants going up and down the hill carrying tourists ($15 a ride) but I declined and decided to walk it. I think Bomton was expecting me to skip the walk and I got some interesting looks from locals as I started up the hill. In reality it was no where as steep as mile 6 at Sawyer Camp and it felt good to walk up. I kept passing people and getting an odd look like "how can a big white guy do this without even breathing hard". I guess my time at 12000 feet helped me out.  At the top was the ruins of an older temple, on climbing to the top of those you got a great view of the area including the Angkor Wat temple. It was quite crowded up there and the sky was overcast so no chance of a good sunset. After about 30 minutes we headed back down. That was it for the day. Bomton and the driver dropped me at the hotel and I went to the restaurant to get something to eat and then headed out to walk around the town and get a beer or two before turning in for the night. I am really glad I had air conditioning, even at 11:00 PM it was warm and humid outside.

I met Bomton and the driver at 8:30 AM, after a nice breakfast at the hotel restaurant. I had the option of getting up early for sunrise over Angkor Wat but as it was cloudy last night I decided to sleep in. It was a good decision as it rained most of the night and was still overcast outside. We were going to be seeing a lot of temples today including one that I was really looking forward to called the "tree root temple". The first temple was Banteay Srei, it is about an hour drive away from the town and it's very beautiful. It is made from Pink Sandstone and is smaller that the other temples that we saw but has some very beautiful carvings. It’s a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva, the creator and destroyer who danced the world into existence. Like many of the temples it has been partially restored but it is still in ruins. The carvings there were so intricate and beautiful it takes your breath away. Realizing that this was all done about a millennium ago with basic tools just boggles the mind. From there we headed to a small temple that was pretty much deserted. It wasn’t on the agenda but Bomton likes to take people there to get a look at the carving and some of the history of this place without a lot of tourists walking around. I decided to walk the perimeter of the temple and was fascinated by the ants. I know it sounds strange but there were millions of them. First I saw these large ones walking in a line by the thousands heading out of a hole in the stone, across the ground and up a tree. Then I noticed these smaller ones and there were millions of them. I followed them with my eye and I could see their trail stretching out at least 100 meters. That is how many and how thick they were. They must have been moving nests because they were carrying eggs with them. It was really spectacular and I took a number of pictures of them. I was fascinated. From there we headed back toward Siem Reap and stopped for lunch where I again drank about 2 liters of water and ate a great meal of Cambodian food. Cambodian food is similar to Thai food but much less spicy. I struck up a conversation with an Irish guy that was traveling through Siem Reap before starting a new job in Vancouver. We made plans to meet up that night for a beer at a place called the Red Piano that I had heard about.

After lunch we went to a temple called Banteay Kdie. This is a large temple with many "Face Towers", large stone buildings that have a face on each side. The faces are huge and carved out of many blocks of sand stone. You can get some amazing views through the windows in the temple of the different faces perfectly framed. I got one of me "kissing" the Buddha. There is also one face here called the "Perfectly happy smiling face", it is a face with the most serene smiling expression on its face like it is enjoying a private joke that has lasted 1000 years. We hiked around this temple for a while exploring the different sites and looking again at all the amazing carvings. I got some great pictures here. After leaving that temple we went to Ta Prohm, or the "Tree Root Temple". It has this name because unlike most of the other temples this one has not been restored, in fact aside from some safety improvements it was left much like it was discovered over 100 years ago. There are trees growing through out the ruins including out of the stone walls and the temple structures. Many of you have seen this temple even if you don’t know it. This temple was used in the filming of Tomb Raider and is features pretty heavily in the movie. This temple, or more appropriately a picture from this temple, is what made me want to come to Angkor Wat. There is an old black and white photograph of a tree growing from a carved head at the gate of the temple. When I saw this for the first time I knew that one day I would go there and see it for myself and now here I was. Unfortunately that tree had been removed but some of the root was still visible. Even without that tree it was an amazing place, trees growing everywhere, right out of the walls. The roots would creep down the walls and along the ground over the stone blocks. It was simple awe inspiring and a sight I don’t think I will ever forget. Even the tree root growing around the face of a dancer carved into the wall, effectively framing it, was beautiful and at the same time spoke of a time forgotten.

After a long time and a lot of pictures we left there and Bomton took me to the local carving school. I had told him that I was interested in getting some stone and metal statues and he said this was a good place to go. I looked around and saw a lot of beautiful things but they were very expensive and shipping was really expensive. I was told this was because the police required a payoff to let things out of the country, even things carved by a school that helps out the handicapped by teaching them skills. On the tour of the school we were shown girls that were deaf painting reproductions from the temple walls, orphans that were being taught the skills of wood and stone carving and other children learning how to do lacquered wood bowls. I decided to hold off on buying anything and we headed out to another shop that he knew that sold metal work. I saw a nice statue that I liked but they wanted 280 for it and wouldn’t bargain so we left. I got back to the hotel and relaxed for a while before going to a Mexican food place for a bite to eat. Mexican food wasn’t bad, not as good as what I had in Moscow but better than what I got in Ireland. After dinner and a beer I headed off and met the Irish fellow at the Red Piano where we sat outside and had a couple more beers before making our way to Molly Malone’s (come on every town has an Irish bar). We hung out there for a bit, had a couple more beers and called it a night, but not before making plans for a beer the next night.

The next day I met up with Bomton and the driver and we drove out to Tonle Sap, a huge lake that is shallow in the dry season, which is when I was there, but swells to 5 times it size in the rainy season. Once out at the lake we got on a small boat and headed out to the lake. In the lake are 5 floating villages that are the homes to over 8000 people. There is a floating hospital, a floating catholic church and several floating schools. It really is like a city out there, there are good parts of the town and parts where the "houses" are run down. Most of the houses have Televisions and other appliances powered by car batteries. The main income of the towns is fishing which the men do mainly at night. There are also people, primarily Vietnamese, in small boats that row up to the tour boats and try to sell the people beer, soft drinks and fruit. They can be quite persistent.

We stopped at one floating restaurant that also had a small fish farm raising catfish and snake head fish. There was also an area that was raising fresh water crocodiles that they use for meat and leather. The area was pretty interesting and amazing to think that it grew 5 times bigger during the rainy season. On the way back we passed a bunch of people net fishing along the banks of the inlet. They would throw out their net and gather in a bunch of small fish and an occasional good size catfish. There was a really strong odor of fermenting fish that is used for the Cambodian fish paste. It was so strong at times that you could actually taste it, but it didn’t last for long. After leaving the lake we headed to a lunch spot for some more Cambodian food before heading out to three small temples located near each other. The last three temples (Lolei, Preah Ko, and Bakong) are very small compared to the others I saw but they are also older, being built in the late 800’s. Thee temples are in pretty bad shape with one of them being mostly collapsed. It was still really interesting to see the carvings and statues that you can still marvel at 1100 years later. Bakong was pretty interesting, there are three tiers and at the corner of each is a stone elephant. Unfortunately the trunks and tusks are gone and in a couple cases the elephant itself is gone but they are still pretty impressive.

After finishing our tour we headed back into town. Bomton took me to the local market where I found a couple metal statues that I liked. They were similar to the one that I saw at the place yesterday but I got both of them for $160. The guy was surprised that I bargained and kept asking Bomton where I was from and would not believe it was the United States because Americans don’t bargain they just pay the asking price. I thought this was pretty funny, I guess I got more out of living in China that I realized. After making that purchase and buying a couple gifts for friends we walked around a bit more and went past the wet market with freshly slaughtered pigs and cows along with lots of live fish for sale. From there we went to the stone carving school called Angkor Artists, where I proceeded to do my best to single handedly support the Siem Reap economy.  That was officially the end of the guided tour, but I made arrangements with Bomton to go to a local Cambodian restaurant with entertainment. He met me at 7:00 and was going to give me a ride on the back of his scooter but I opted for a tuk tuk. It was a nice restaurant but absolutely no English. As we were ordering he asked me if I wanted to have some company for dinner. When I asked what he meant he explained that there were woman who worked at the restaurant that would join you for dinner and conversation (nothing more, get your mind out of the gutter). I didn’t care so two girls came over and joined us. No conversation for me as neither spoke English. We proceeded to eat some great food, drink a lot of beer and listen to people sing in Cambodian. It was an interesting experience. At around 9:30 I took off to meet my Irish friend who was already waiting for me. Joining us was a woman from England that he had met on his tour of Tonle Sap earlier in the day. We enjoyed a few drinks, chatting about Cambodia and listening to good music before we all decided to call it a night and head home.

The next day I was on my own until the driver showed up at 1:30 PM to take me to the airport. After sleeping in and then having breakfast I went to an internet café and checked email and had a really tasty Papaya and yogurt smoothie. After my battery was about exhausted I walked down to the market to get a couple gifts and hit the ATM. No problems at the airport, but I did find it funny that it costs more to leave Cambodia ($30) than it costs to get in ($20). Flight to Bangkok was uneventful. I sat next to a woman from Denver and we chatted for much of the 50 minute flight.

Thanks for bearing with me and my long posting on Cambodia. I am going to say that the temples were one of the high points of my entire trip. I would strongly encourage everyone to go see Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. They are an amazing site. Many of them have been restored or are in the process of being restored. The work is being funded by many nations from Japan to Korea, Germany, Italy and I am happy to say the United States (though not as much as I would like to see). I would say go there soon. There were lots of tourists when I was there and I think it will only continue to get busier. They are building hotels left and right, not basic hotels but 4 and 5 star resorts by names like La Meridian. Go before it gets too commercialized. I know I will certainly be going back someday.