Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Here in Siem Reap we are traveling around to the sites via Tuk-Tuk. Despite my dislike of motorcycles, I’m not as uncomfortable with riding in a Tuk-Tuk. I’m not so afraid of falling off! However, there are still some moments that take my breath away as we zip through the traffic. Here is a picture of me with our Tuk-Tuk driver, Nanty.

Friday morning, we visited a temple built by a very self-absorbed king, Jayavarman VII. The temple has 216 faces on the towers that supposedly look a lot like the king himself. On the upper terrace of this temple, you are looking right into some of these faces. It is really a neat place! No matter where you go in the temple you are always being watched by one of the faces. While we were there some Cambodian dancers came in traditional costumes and for a dollar you could get some pictures taken with them. Karl wasn’t interested in getting his picture taken with them but he wanted pictures of the dancers in their costumes. Many of the foreign tourists would take pictures of the dancers not realizing that they needed to pay. When they were informed that they needed to pay, some of them would walk away in a huff as if it was some kind of scam. We were a bit surprised because at Disney World people pay $10 to $20 dollars to get a picture of their kids with Mickey Mouse and think nothing of it. We were happy to give the dancers a few dollars for the pictures we took. Actually, the dancers added a bit of color to gray rocks of the temple.

The next temple that we visited is called Ta Prohm. It is well known because it wasn’t restored the way some of the other temples were. It had been so overgrown by the jungle that there are trees which are essentially holding parts of the temple together. So the trees remain in the temple but the temple isn’t exactly as it was found. The vines and other plants that probably covered every surface at one time are kept cut back and there are nice wooden walkways to guide visitors to the most famous trees in the temple. We read in our guide book about one of the trees that was featured in the movie Tomb Raider. As we were wondering through the temple, we heard people talking about the Tomb Raider tree and some guides boasted that they knew exactly where Angelina Jolie stood for the filming of the movie. The only problem was that every person we overheard was refering to a different tree! Since the temple isn’t fully restored it didn't match up with the map in our guide book which shows the layout as it should be. Because of this, we got a bit lost in the temple. Mostly this was because there were piles of blocks preventing us from going directly from one area of the temple to another. We finally made our way around and saw all the major trees in the temple. It is really quite amazing the power that nature has!

On the pathway into the Ta Prohm temple there was a Cambodian musical group playing. The group is made up of landmine victims who now make a living by playing music and selling CDs of their music. It is traditional Cambodian wedding music and the perfect musical backdrop for these temples. We bought a CD so that when we torture our friends and family with endless slideshows of vacation pictures they can have a break from our monotonous voices and hear some exotic music from Cambodia.

Our last stop of the day was at Angkor Wat, the most famous temple of the area. This temple is surrounded by a wide moat. When we stopped for Karl to take some pictures of the moat, I made the mistake of feeding some monkey some pineapple cores. The monkeys decided to join me in the Tuk-Tuk and see what else I had. After a few tense moments and Nanty encouraging them to leave, they finally exited the Tuk-Tuk and we left. So, now I know not to feed the monkeys! They really aren’t as cute as they appear.

Angkor Wat is really an impressive structure. After you cross the moat you enter an inner courtyard that is also quite large. There are two large ponds on either side of a walkway that stretches from the outer wall to the entrance of the main temple. In the picture, we are standing in front of one of the ponds with the main temple behind us. In this picture we are about halfway between the outer wall and the main temple, so you can see it is really a large area that this temple encompasses. The main temple is also quite large with a couple of additional enclosures before reaching what is called the temple-mountain. The temple-mountain is the center tower of the temple and it represents Mt. Meru. If I understand our guidebook correctly, Mt. Meru is where the gods lives so in entering the temple and climbing the stairs to the top of the temple-mountain you are metaphorically journeying to the home of the gods. By this time, Karl and I were pretty tired and we decided not to hike up the stairs. Perhaps, we’ll make the journey to the home of the gods another time.