Siem Reap (Angkor) (7/5-7/8)

Hello from the amazing Khmer temples of Angkor! These temples are absolutely amazing! To think they were undiscovered until the 1860s, when French explorers stumbled upon them in the Cambodian jungle…

Enjoy reading about our Cambodian adventure, and check out our photos of the temples of Angkor: click here.

Kimberly

We have spent the last three days exploring just a few of the many temples in the area. Some have been restored, others untouched, as the French discovered them—and others were taken apart in a restoration effort by the French, only to have the Khmer Rouge rise to power, stop all restoration work, and destroy all the archaeological paperwork…there are thousands of temple bricks waiting to be put back together in a giant jigsaw puzzle…if only the archaeologists can figure out which ones go where…

We focused on a few of the temple complexes during our stay. We spent quite a bit of time at the main temple of Angkor Wat, which was likely built as a funerary temple for Suryavarman II (1112-1152 AD)—even waking up at 4:30am to catch the glory of sunrise at Angkor. Surprisingly, we essentially had the temple to ourselves…there were 20-30 other tourists out front, but they hadn’t figured out that the place to be was in front of the reflecting pools for the best photos (they soon figured it out when they saw what we were doing). Then, we decided to go inside the temple at climb to the top of the main shrine to watch the sun come out of the clouds…we were all alone up there, enjoying Angkor all to ourselves…

The complex of Angkor Thom, the main city that Jayavarman VII (1181-1219AD) built was spectacular. All over this city of stone are giant statues with carvings of the face of this “king of kings”…and every single face has a different expression. Giant eyes and smiles are watching you at every turn as you explore the city, especially the main building of Bayon, with 54 gothic towers, each with 4 faces of the king…making for 216 coldly smiling, enormous faces…

One of our favorites was the temple of Ta Prohm, a Buddhist temple dedicated to Jayavarman VII’s mother. If it looks familiar in the photos, it’s because both “Tomb Raider” and “The Two Brothers” recently were filmed at the site. The French decided to leave this temple in the general condition they found it in, to give tourists the chance to feel that sense of wonder and awe of the temples being swallowed by the trees in the Cambodian jungle. The only thing we didn’t like about Ta Prohm was that it was one of the places we needed to be on the lookout for the especially dangerous, and highly venomous emerald tree snake…it drops on its victims from above, which meant I spent a large percentage of the time studying the tree branches above my head, looking for anything that was moving and green…

We spent our third day exploring the more remote temples of the Angkor ruins. We visited the exquisite little temple of Banteay Srei, which is well known for it’s incredibly well preserved sandstone carvings. Some of the relief work is over three inches deep. These is still debate as to who built these temples and when, but current experts think this complex actually predated Angkor Wat.

Our hosts in Siem Reap, the wonderful Jerry & Thina at the Monsoon Bed & Breakfast had all sorts of recommendations for what we should see and do while we were in Siem Reap. We are so glad we took them up on their suggestion to hire their driver, Mr. C., to take us further afield to the “River of a Thousand Lingas” and the temple ruins of Beng Mealea. A linga is a Hindu representation of the male phallus…see the photo of the lingas for sale in the market in Ubud, Bali, if you’ve forgotten what that means…  The hike up to the riverbed was excruciating….and the heat and humidity didn’t help! But all the carvings in the rocks around the river, and actually in the river itself, were just amazing.

The ruins of Beng Mealea were just beyond description. Deep in the Cambodian countryside is this temple, which is left in complete ruins, with collapsed galleries, giant tree roots strangling the temple, and huge piles of blocks and carvings. We had the temple ruins almost all to ourselves, but luckily two young boys followed us in and offered to show us the way. The film “Two Brothers” filmed here in 2004 and left behind a wooden walkway, making the temple much more accessible. I would have been happy just staying on the walkway (away from the emerald tree snakes), but the boys were insistent that we go inside the temple… Now inside means literally climbing down into the ruins and crawling around on the piles of blocks to make your way around the complex. It was an amazing experience!

Our time at Angkor was really special. We are grateful to our fabulous hosts for giving us a deeper insight into the Cambodian history and current cultural situation. Thina is a literature professor who is just finishing up a book on the current state of Cambodia. She lived in the country until she was 10 years old and the Khmer Rouge took over. After one month under the new regime, her mother miraculously found a way for the family to sneak out with a group of Vietnamese by walking for two days across the border and playing mute. As her family was part of the Cambodian elite, they would have all most certainly been executed had they not been successful with their escape. Hearing Thina’s perspective on the situation in Cambodia was fascinating and we feel especially lucky to have had the experience.