The Bayon at Angkor Thom
Bantey Kedei
Ta Prahm
Craig and I are just finishing our first full day in Siem Reap, Cambodia, the town that is the base for visiting all the temples in Angkor, including Angkor Wat itself and about seventy more. Contrary to our expectations of hot days in the 90s (which is wintry cool for cambodia, it is a blessing of traveling here in January) it's a balmy 70 or 80 something degrees not too hot and it has recently been raining so not too dusty either. We hear that Northern California is being absolutely pounded by wet floody weather, so I guess all over the world, unusual patterns prevail.
We got here last night after dark, on an interesting roundabout Silk Air flight from Singapore through Danang, vietnam, odd since Danang is more than an hour north, out of the way. We are staying at the Borann/Auberge des Temples which is pleasant because of its garden and its very nice staff, especially the manager who is gentle and helpful and not until this morning did we realize, he has lost a leg to a landmine, as so many people here have. We are enjoying the delicious Khmer and Thai style food, to me quite a great change from Bali which though tasty has some odd smoky/dingier flavourings I just can't quite adore as much as Thai food even after 4 visits there. Ginger catfish, and fish cooked in coconut milk, quite delicious. We are enjoying traveling around by tuktuk with our pleasant driver Johann who charges us $13 dollars a day. We are adjusting to an economy where everything is in US dollars (wonder how soon they will switch this to euros) and things are considerably more expensive than in Bali (our hotel is $45 US before taxes, and a large bottle of beer is $3), yet the folks around, clearly much poorer and working hard in a very nice way to part us from our currency. Strange to have an ATM push out crisp US $50 bills. Lucky to have them though as otherwise we'd be stranded.
Siem Reap has a lot of charm for us after one day. It's on a flat plain and at the moment since it's the dry period it's pretty dusty, but it has a nice small river through it with a little promenade which apparently is kept fairly clean these days, and the dominant architecture is somewhat french in feel, two story buildings with little balconies and shutters, and due to this architecture when you sit at a 'sidewalk cafe' with motorbikes bicycles and tuktuks passing you feel you are in a 1960s or 70s movie set about western journalists in southeast asia. Siem Reap grew up here to support tourists, this does give it a lot of charms like a lot of good food and drink opportunities. Kids here seem very happy to wave to strangers, people like to practice language pronunciation with you, and although the officials can be a bit dauntingly unsmiling (Craig will be writing about the 'wizengamot'feeling of trying to get the visa-on-arrival), there is a general feeling of peaceful welcome here, so far anyway.
We have benefitted a lot from my friend Bonnie Baskin's advice about what to visit when, in Angkor. Due to Singapore Airlines/Silk Airlines fares and schedules, we have ended up with five full days here, and so instead of going immediately to the major attractions, Angkor Wat itself and Angkor Thom, this morning we started with the allegedly wildest of the temples, Ta Prohm, which is one where the temples were still propped up by large trees that grew up and through them, and these trees were left in place, so that large trunks and roots curve in and around the temple ruins. We visited about five places this morning, Ta Prohm, Ta kEo and then three smaller temples in that area. I was not totally prepared for the volume of visitors at Angkor, although the ruins cover seventy square miles and they are complex and intricate, yet there are plenty of visitors to fill them. We started at seven am and headed for one of the slightly less visited places, ad yet we didn't get there before five or six French, Korean, Japanese, German and American tour groups! Can't believe the number of languages here. Tomorrow we will get an even earlier start to try to beat some of the groups, but it has been great. Although I liked Ta Prohm a lot, with its trees and still fairly wild feeling, definitely my favorite place to visit from this morning was Banteay Kdei, a temple complex that many tour groups bypass because it is billed as 'deteriorating', yet it is full of intricate carvings of dancers and hindu figures, and has some buddhas, the lacy carvings were fabulous and the temple's widely advertised ''deterioration' was really charming. This temple was buddhist and then, when cambodia's ruler switched into a more hindu period, 150 buddhas were buried there apparently. I hope to see them if we get to the local museum but it is expensive, $12 each and so we may not go.
Also, the many 13 year old t shirt sellers were determined but very kind. I can't believe their language skills either.... They switch back between French, German, English and Korean and they are just kids! When I told one of them that maybe we were canadian, she listed every Canadian province and then talked to me about quebec in French.
Then after a midday rest and swim, at about three in the afternoon we went to Bayon, the centerpiece of Angkor Thom. This is a many layered temple with what seems like about 40 large, stone, smiling, enigmatic, enormous faces, facing many directions into the jungle. What a jewel. Even with so many different tourists, as the sun drifted down and all the faces lit up and changed, I really loved it. We are moving very slowly through each temple grouping, and have plenty of time to peek into tunnel like passages ways, clamber up and into rooms with windows looking out at the jungle and climb up, up, up and then down, down, down steep stairways with risers about 4 inches wide. They ask you not to put your hands on the carvings, but this is impossible sometimes as nearly every surface is carved in some way with lacy tracings of flowers birdsd and animals, or full-on bas relief of hindu gods and goddesses or buddhas and boddhisatvas.
I am nursing my sprained ankle but so far so good. The ankle gods are smiling on me as I clamber around. I am really enjoying myself. I am trying to learn a little Khmer, the local language, but without a good phrasebook, very hard. The most interesting thing sometimes is to look at all the tourists around and try hard to figure out where they might be from. listen to all the languages being spoken around me, so many european and asian variants, people from Finland next to people from Shanghai next to people from Singapore. Several times I have thought someone might be malaysian or balinese and instead they laugh at me and I realize they are cambodian or Thai. I'm lost. World heritage site for sure, this is.
We got here last night after dark, on an interesting roundabout Silk Air flight from Singapore through Danang, vietnam, odd since Danang is more than an hour north, out of the way. We are staying at the Borann/Auberge des Temples which is pleasant because of its garden and its very nice staff, especially the manager who is gentle and helpful and not until this morning did we realize, he has lost a leg to a landmine, as so many people here have. We are enjoying the delicious Khmer and Thai style food, to me quite a great change from Bali which though tasty has some odd smoky/dingier flavourings I just can't quite adore as much as Thai food even after 4 visits there. Ginger catfish, and fish cooked in coconut milk, quite delicious. We are enjoying traveling around by tuktuk with our pleasant driver Johann who charges us $13 dollars a day. We are adjusting to an economy where everything is in US dollars (wonder how soon they will switch this to euros) and things are considerably more expensive than in Bali (our hotel is $45 US before taxes, and a large bottle of beer is $3), yet the folks around, clearly much poorer and working hard in a very nice way to part us from our currency. Strange to have an ATM push out crisp US $50 bills. Lucky to have them though as otherwise we'd be stranded.
Siem Reap has a lot of charm for us after one day. It's on a flat plain and at the moment since it's the dry period it's pretty dusty, but it has a nice small river through it with a little promenade which apparently is kept fairly clean these days, and the dominant architecture is somewhat french in feel, two story buildings with little balconies and shutters, and due to this architecture when you sit at a 'sidewalk cafe' with motorbikes bicycles and tuktuks passing you feel you are in a 1960s or 70s movie set about western journalists in southeast asia. Siem Reap grew up here to support tourists, this does give it a lot of charms like a lot of good food and drink opportunities. Kids here seem very happy to wave to strangers, people like to practice language pronunciation with you, and although the officials can be a bit dauntingly unsmiling (Craig will be writing about the 'wizengamot'feeling of trying to get the visa-on-arrival), there is a general feeling of peaceful welcome here, so far anyway.
We have benefitted a lot from my friend Bonnie Baskin's advice about what to visit when, in Angkor. Due to Singapore Airlines/Silk Airlines fares and schedules, we have ended up with five full days here, and so instead of going immediately to the major attractions, Angkor Wat itself and Angkor Thom, this morning we started with the allegedly wildest of the temples, Ta Prohm, which is one where the temples were still propped up by large trees that grew up and through them, and these trees were left in place, so that large trunks and roots curve in and around the temple ruins. We visited about five places this morning, Ta Prohm, Ta kEo and then three smaller temples in that area. I was not totally prepared for the volume of visitors at Angkor, although the ruins cover seventy square miles and they are complex and intricate, yet there are plenty of visitors to fill them. We started at seven am and headed for one of the slightly less visited places, ad yet we didn't get there before five or six French, Korean, Japanese, German and American tour groups! Can't believe the number of languages here. Tomorrow we will get an even earlier start to try to beat some of the groups, but it has been great. Although I liked Ta Prohm a lot, with its trees and still fairly wild feeling, definitely my favorite place to visit from this morning was Banteay Kdei, a temple complex that many tour groups bypass because it is billed as 'deteriorating', yet it is full of intricate carvings of dancers and hindu figures, and has some buddhas, the lacy carvings were fabulous and the temple's widely advertised ''deterioration' was really charming. This temple was buddhist and then, when cambodia's ruler switched into a more hindu period, 150 buddhas were buried there apparently. I hope to see them if we get to the local museum but it is expensive, $12 each and so we may not go.
Also, the many 13 year old t shirt sellers were determined but very kind. I can't believe their language skills either.... They switch back between French, German, English and Korean and they are just kids! When I told one of them that maybe we were canadian, she listed every Canadian province and then talked to me about quebec in French.
Then after a midday rest and swim, at about three in the afternoon we went to Bayon, the centerpiece of Angkor Thom. This is a many layered temple with what seems like about 40 large, stone, smiling, enigmatic, enormous faces, facing many directions into the jungle. What a jewel. Even with so many different tourists, as the sun drifted down and all the faces lit up and changed, I really loved it. We are moving very slowly through each temple grouping, and have plenty of time to peek into tunnel like passages ways, clamber up and into rooms with windows looking out at the jungle and climb up, up, up and then down, down, down steep stairways with risers about 4 inches wide. They ask you not to put your hands on the carvings, but this is impossible sometimes as nearly every surface is carved in some way with lacy tracings of flowers birdsd and animals, or full-on bas relief of hindu gods and goddesses or buddhas and boddhisatvas.
I am nursing my sprained ankle but so far so good. The ankle gods are smiling on me as I clamber around. I am really enjoying myself. I am trying to learn a little Khmer, the local language, but without a good phrasebook, very hard. The most interesting thing sometimes is to look at all the tourists around and try hard to figure out where they might be from. listen to all the languages being spoken around me, so many european and asian variants, people from Finland next to people from Shanghai next to people from Singapore. Several times I have thought someone might be malaysian or balinese and instead they laugh at me and I realize they are cambodian or Thai. I'm lost. World heritage site for sure, this is.
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