Flying to Cambodia, Siem Reap, Angkor Wat

Before I left Tiru, I celebrated my birthday by climbing up Mt. Arunchala with Jordi. We started fairly early in the morning but it still got pretty hot by the time we reached the top. The entire peak is black and slippery with burned ghee from the Deepam Festival where they lit the mountain on fire, and there were piles of ghee urns used for the fire.

I travelled from Tiru to Chennai on a De-luxe express bus, otherwise known as the World's Most Air-Conditioned Vehicle. A/C represents luxury over here and evidently more A/C represents more luxury - everyone on the bus was bundled up and shivering. It wasn't really that hot out even. Flew from Chennai to Bangkok, and met my friend Cindy, fresh from her stint at the Elephant Park in Thailand. Wonderful to see her and hear about her adventures! Together we flew to Siem Reap and checked into our lovely little hotel, the Bopha Angkor. This was the big splurge of the trip, and worth it. They had that lush "Buddhas in the Garden" feel with lots of carved wood furniture and moody colors in the rooms.

Siem Reap itself was surprisingly well-developed and comfortable. There were a ton of restaurants, bars, hotels and foot massage parlors (which are great - Cindy is developing a bit of a habit). And any type of food you might want, though the Khmer Cuisine was all that we wanted - the curries are delicious, a bit deeper and not as spicy like Thai food. The signature curry dish is "Amok", which is tasty and just fun to say ("I'd like the Chicken Amok").



Angkor Wat was awe-inspiring, huge, and incredibly touristy. It's actually an enormous set of temples spread over a large area outside of the city. The namesake Angkor Wat Temple is gigantic, covering God knows how many square kilometers, and having a moat around it that looks like a large river. I had the same reaction I had when entering it that I had when I first came to Manhattan - it's so large you have a hard time getting your head around it. Created in the 1100's, it's a Hindu temple, with that religion having spread from India over through Cambodia. My favorite part of the temple were the huge carved murals representing the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata - the details and sheer size of them was incredible. There was also a carving of the Hindu legend of "Churning of the Sea of Milk", which involved gods and demons playing tug of war with a big snake wrapped around a mountain (long story). This image is a bit of an obsession in Cambodia, and the scene was replayed over and over in temples and buildings throughout the country. Although Angkor Wat Temple has the famous 5 towers that grace the Cambodian flag, it's not the most photogenic temple due to its size. You can't really capture it very well. Though it's extremely popular for Cambodian wedding parties to go there for their post-ceremony pictures. The parking lot looks like you could be going to the Cambodian version of Lollapallooza, with an endless supply of stalls and restaurants, plus kids trying to sell you books, water, hats, etc.


Much more managable and gorgeous is the Bayon Temple, in the nearby ancient city of Angkor Thom. This is the temple with the famous faces on its towers, and it's easy to go into a camera frenzy here. One thing we learned about the temples is that they were a mix of Hindu and Buddhist. They were built over the reigns of many Khmer kings, and the kings tended to convert back and forth between the two religions. The sons of kings would convert to Buddhism after their fathers had built some beautiful Hindu temple, and then do bitchy things like scrape all the faces off of the Hindu gods in dad's temple. Or plop a big Buddha in the middle of it to make a statement. The Bayon Temple was originally Buddhist (then Hindu, then Buddhist again), and it is speculated that the faces represent the faces of different incarnations of Buddha.


Next up was the even more photogenic Ta Prohm, which was still partially overgrown and had trees growing out of it. We had a guide for the first day, Mr. Leon, who loved to take our picture, but from a very far distance. So you can kind of see us among the tree roots in some of the pictures (it was a major victory when we got him to go vertical in his orientation). Mr. Leon was super knowledgeable but hard to follow, so by the end of the day I had this hazy dreamy sense of Khmer history (and a headache). After Ta Prohm we ended our day of touring, and celebrated New Year's Eve with a delicious eight-course khmer meal at our hotel.


The next day Cindy and I decided to get up early and greet the sunrise of the New Year at a peaceful temple in Angkor. Cindy even suggested that maybe I could find a quiet place and meditate out there for a while. Little did we know that half the city had the same idea. All of the Tuk Tuks were already engaged when we started on our way, but luckily we eventually found the wonderful Mr. Bich, who drove us around that day. He was the sweetest man ever, and we liked him so much that we even stopped making fun of his name about half-way through the day. We arrived out at the temple, a little late for the sunrise, and to a crush of tourists and an army of little kids trying to sell us stuff (which led to our favorite quote of the trip: Little kid: "You want books, water, tea?", Cindy: "I want nothing", Little kid: "Nothing? 10 dollar!"). The place was so crazy and unpeaceful that we fled immediately. Luckily there was a little temple across the street with almost nobody else at it, and we were able to have some quiet time over there.




Next Mr. Bich suggested we get out to the outlying Banteay Srei temple before it got too crowded later in the day. This is reportedly the most scenic temple and is 20km north of Angkor Wat. We enjoyed the drive out through a number of small villages, where we learned that gas stations in Cambodia frequently look like a row of Johnny Walker Red bottles filled with petro. When we got to Banteay Srei, there was tour bus after tour bus unloading Japanese and Chinese tourists. If this was the unbusy time, I can't imagine it later. It was a crazy crush just trying to get in to see the temple, with Japanese tourists snapping thousands of pics with their cellphones that have more megapixels than my camera. The temple itself is very small but exquisite - almost every square inch of it is carved ornately.




After that Cindy and I had had our fill and rapidly lost our temple endurance, catching a few more on the way back in to town. We climbed a couple that were very steep pyramid shapes, which offered wonderful views of the area. Then back to town for rest and more foot massages. Fantastic experience!