Day 2: Seeing the temples

We arranged for a Tuk-Tuk driver, Ra, to pick us up at 8am for a full day of temples.  We planned to see the #1 sight, Angkor Wat, on day 2 because we didn't want everything else to be a let-down.  We'd see about 5 today, and Nicole and I have a similar style so we go pretty fast.  We read a bit of the history of King Jayvarasham VII who built many of these (note:  I just called him "JAY" so I'm not sure how the rest of his name was spelled), as well as some of the stories.  Fascinating to me is that there were about 1 million people living in this area and each site was basically a city within the empire.  They are only a 5-minute drive from one another, but in a time with no vehicles it's understandable that the neighboring cities are about 3-4 miles away.



Tuk Tuk Selfie



We had to drive past Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom on our way, so we got a sample of the beauty of these places. First we saw Preah Khan.  We really liked this one and took a lot of pictures.  It had a long history of king Jay that we read.  Not much else to say until you see the pictures, but one interesting fact is that one end was built for Buddhists to enter, and the other for Hindus.  It has a Vishnu statue for the Hindus and some other features, so you could worship in your faith by whichever entrance you took.

Next, we saw Neak Pean.   This was in a way one of my favorites because it was unique and simple.  The Lonely Planet book says "If Vegas ever has an Angkor-themed pool, this would be it."  We walk along a long, wooden path over a lake, past a band playing cool Cambodian music.  More on the band later.  We continue on and Nicole points out the very astute reality that this type of standing water in a 3rd-world country is the type you read about with flesh-eating microorganisms (don't critique my poor biology lingo), so she was a little concerned about falling in. We forge ahead, dodging the Asian tourists stopping for many pictures and observing a couple of their hats in the water.  The walk was very pretty if you can ignore the thought of falling in.  The destination is a tower, which apparently had an "anthropomorphic" fountain in the 12th century.  The tower would shoot water in four directions into four pools, and the ''healing fountains'' were an elephant, a human face, and two others I don't remember.  It may not have been breathtaking, but still cool to look at, and I liked to reflect for a minute on how people used it 900 years ago.  This was basically their doctor:  I believe they would bathe in these pools when they were in need of healing.  Now we've adapted the idea that deathly ill people should stay out of the pool, but to each their own.



Pre Rup

We then went to Ta Som, which we liked...but it started to look similar to the others.  Afterwards, we headed to Pre Rup, which was more of a platform with great views.  We really liked this one because it was more open and we could pose like lions on the stairs.  More of a golden color instead of the grey, and plenty of light, and five upright structures on top of the flat upper area. These places were full of really cute kids and others selling stuff, so we quickly learned how to say "No thank you" (Te Ah Kun)  in Khmer, which is helpful and sometimes enough to get them to stop following you. 

We took a long drive to Bantaey Srei, the red temple.  The coolest part was the drive:  Gorgeous farmland mixed with palm trees, houses on stilts and villages all along the way.  The diverse housing was simple yet clean, the people, although poor, seemed to have their basic needs met and looked very happy. What we really noticed was that there wasn't trash all over like you see in most 3rd-world countries.  We passed several primary and secondary schools and saw many children walking, bicycling, and motor bike-ing to school. We saw women heating up stone Cambodian BBQs, and people with beer posters on their houses, cows, chickens, dogs, naked cambodian babies and an occasional monkey or two were just hanging out.

Bantaey Srei was pretty neat, and the entrance was pretty fancy, but we were getting templed-out.  We dodged the umbrella-armed French tourist bus group and made our way through pretty quickly.  The red stone was cool, as was the fact that this was about 200 years older than Angkor Wat.  Seems they built this village, then made their way the 25 km towards Angkor as the empire grew.  Nicole got some pics of three adorable little girls giggling in an ancient window, while a boy jumped over them and tried to steal the spotlight.  We guys are the same at all ages and nationalities.  We had a quick lunch of pineapple fried rice because the "overpriced tourist trap" food was like $6/plate.  How could they gouge us like that! ;)

On the way back we asked to see Ta Prohm because in 4 1/2 hours we were already done with our expected stops.  He takes us to another temple on the way and we say "no that's okay" as it looked just like Pre Rup to us.  Ta Prohm was different because it was the "tomb raider temple" with a tree growing right out of it.  Roots all over it. Pretty cool spot.  We took a half-mile walk through a pretty tree-lined trail to get there, and listened to the loud screech of Cicadas all the way.  It was a nice temple, but like many of these was being restored so we were able to see it quickly and head out.  On the way back a policeman showed up and the 8 year-old kid trying to sell us postcards took off on a dead-sprint into the woods (barefoot no less). 

Happily we head back, and decide to not be ambitious and go to Angkor Thom today.  It's hot, as Ra advises us.  Ra was a really sweet man (as most Cambodians seem to be) and had cold towels and cold water waiting for us at every stop. We'd always pan the gaggle of tuk-tuks for our guy and then see a giant smile as he came walking out to reveal himself.  So at around 2:30 we get back into town.

THE MASSAGE.  So this is part of the wonderment of SE Asia:  The cheap massage.  Instead of the $8 hour at our hotel, Nicole finds a couple places in our guidebook.  One is right by the restaurant we wanted to visit at 5:30. So we head to the Lemongrass Massage, and are greeted with tea made from lemongrass & ginger...then we hike 2 flights of steep stairs after a foot cleaning.  With relaxing music playing in the air conditioned room we entered, the atmosphere was serene and the traditional Khmer massage was awesome...Travis fell asleep, as often happens. When we return downstairs, Beale tea (used as treatment for loss of appetite and some fatal disease like tuberculosis - not quite as tastey as the lemongrass but a nice way to ease back into civilization) is waiting for us as we complete our comment cards. It was an 'expensive' one at $12 for 60 minutes, but they were pros.

We find a couple of backpacker-type bars and Nicole picks the one playing Adele, and we're happy to be in a familiar setting.  Just a bunch of people with nothing urgent to do, having a local beer or two. 

Siem Reap Bar

We decide it's time for dinner and get lost in the tangled circle of streets and alleys now that it is dark.  We pass a couple places full of lawn chairs facing 8 TVs, and Travis is still wondering why. We pass a restaurant with a poorly-translated subtitle "Satisfactory food" and Nicole captured the moment.

We finally find our restaurant "Sugar Palm" and are happy we did because we saw Andrew Lau's doppleganger.  Cool atmosphere, and some good local fare.  We had a marinated steak salad that was awesome, and a fish Amok.  Amok is the local curry, and it's like a slightly-thicker curry than Thai.  The whitefish was very light and fluffy and just tasted great.  It should be noted that Travis loved fish amok a little more than Nicole did...but we were happy with the meal.

Apsara dance show:  We post up at a bar called The Temple that has a 2-hour Apsara dance show which is basically a band playing while a group of ladies comes out and does 5-7 dances, each in 5-10 minute bursts with different outfits. 



The Coconut Dance

 Travis was excited to see "The Coconut Dance," but disappointed that rather than wearing the coconuts they were oddly caressing them and banging them together for our musical pleasure.  The Peacock dance was kind of cool too, with both male and female peacock, which should be noted is not biologically accurate.  A lot of the women wearing those gold hats that look like little temples, and they do this crazy thing bending their fingers and feet in weird ways. Then they had some more lively dances, but most were pretty slow and more like yoga than the up-beat stuff you'd see in say a latin country.

We had a couple beers on pub street, chatted up a South African chef who works at the Sofitel and just moved to Cambodia 3 weeks ago, then called it a night.  We're waking up at 4:30 am tomorrow to see Angkor Wat at sunrise!