We realized our previous post ended rather abruptly, for which we'd like to apologize. We weren't feeling very well but we are now. For eight hours we sped at 20kph down the Sangker River from Battambang to Siem Reap on a wooden boat filled with a few tourists, a few locals, a lot of kramas (a versatile scarf used by locals), even more produce and a sewing machine, but no animals.
We did see a little girl pass us in a boat with a boa constrictor around her neck, larger than her body. We passed intricate villages of houseboats, meeting primitive living conditions, enjoying an entire day's worth of activity and waving to enthusiastic children the entire way. We did have the option to take a bus for a quarter of the price and half the time, but the romance of the scenic route and a boat called our names and emptied our wallets.
After this lovely excursion, complete with red wine concealed in water bottles, we were rested and ready for three days of
Angkor temple expeditions covering 400 square kilometers (which happens to include forested areas, rice paddies, cows, pigs and water buffalo).
Originally Angkor was discovered by Portuguese explorers in the 16th century, who deemed it a "Walled City". Like most Portuguese 'discoveries' a different European country swooped in centuries later to take credit for this exploration. When French explorers (re)'discovered' Angkor in the mid 19th century, Siem Reap was a small village. During this time the Thai somehow came to control the beautiful treasure that is Angkor and only in 1907 was it returned to Cambodia, which also marked it's first year for foreign tourism with 200 visitors in the course of three months.
Thanks to the Franco efforts in restoring the ruins of the hundreds of temples that make up Angkor during the early 1900's, by the 1930s-1960's Siem Reap was the hip spot to visit for foreigners traveling to Asia, with such notable fashion superstars as Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Kennedy. During the war, obviously, tourism stopped completely and Angkor was forgotten to greater current tragedies and re-consumed by the lush jungle. Foreigners began to return in the 1990's, only to find many temples in further ruin due to the thoughtless destruction of the Khmer Rouge. This said, the temples of Angkor are still pretty fabulous, even those that have yet to be rehabilitated by the many international organizations investing in this enormous endeavor. In 1992, this 8th Wonder of the World became a UNESCO World Heritage Site (making it, according to our calculations, possibly SE Asia's 512th UNESCO sponsored location)!
The Angkorian period spans more than 600 years from AD 802 - 1432, which is when the temples were constructed, invaded and reconstructed to match the religion of the day. More than 10 King's and their descendants reigned during these years, each with no ideas of how to run Angkor. While most of the sandstone temples were originally Buddhist, the faces and sitting positions of many deities were carved, altered and replaced to resemble Hindu gods, as different groups came to control this region. The evidence of this is still plainly visible in some temples. King Jayavarman VII was a special case of narcissism. Seeing himself in Shiva, the Supreme god in Hinduism, he pronounced himself a God King, the earth way representative of Shiva. While Shiva is the destroyer, Jayavarman VII did just the opposite, building a 'temple mountain' symbolizing Shiva's dwelling place at the center of the Universe, which would serve as a prototype for Khmer architecture to follow, including many building which he would help to design.
Early on our first day together, our tuktuk driver informed us that he thought of his vehicle as a spaceship and so, not remembering his real name, we renamed him Marvin (for those of you who watched Looney Toones growing up). Not understanding the nickname, he laughed in acceptance anyway. Marvin was a talker, chatting wildly to us in often incomprehensible English as he sped in front of the tuktuk on his motorbike, only taking breaks to flirt with women driving past us on scooters or to smoke cigarettes. After a while we also learned that he was incredibly sensitive, taking anything we said out of context and making it a highly personal situation. We were even invited and then uninvited to have beers and a snake roast at his village to celebrate the end of three days of intensive ruin exploration.
Each day we spent roughly six hours visiting Angkor (quite possibly the largest temple in the world), the Bayon and surrounding temples. We saw about 15 temples in total including one mystical and ethereal sunrise. We saved Angkor Wat and the Bayon for the last day, with Marvin instructing us to close our eyes as we drove past them each day on our way to smaller, yet impressive, outer sights. Many of the temples featured Buddhist and Hindu gods and many were strewn with symbolic figures of lingas and female fertility.
Key figures of Hindu and Buddhist teachings decorated the grounds and temple walls, such as gods/goddesses, Apsara dancers, human warriors, demons and animals, including horses, cows, elephants, snakes, half-human/half-birds and dogs.
Upon arrival at each temple entrance we were inundated with a dozen children scrambling in several languages to sell us scarves, snacks, puppets, flutes, paintings and other knickknacks. We politely resisted with "ate aw kohn" (no thank you) and were impressed with the childrens' fluency in Spanish and English and likely many other languages. You're probably wondering how we visited 18 hours worth of temples without getting exhausted. The truth is, we were surprised at how unique each temple was; some focusing more on fountains and pools and others on worshiping halls and relieved engravings, not to mention the natural energy and enthusiastic aw the sites left us. Furthermore, while transporting between temples, the endearingly genuine smiles an and simply enthusiastic hellos from Khmer of all ages along the side of every road filled us with even more positive energy.
The littering of fellow tourists at Angkor Wat didn't take away from the charm. Focusing on the orange robbed monks, we walked over extravagant lawns from the main entrance to the temple, , giving the place an ancient air reminiscent of the Versailles Palace. Inside we were lucky enough to borrow pants and a skirt from some nice Belgian girls and scarves from the Khmer workers to cover our inappropriately exposed skin in the muggy 100 degree heat, allowing us entrance to the quintessential Angkorian temple of the Ascendance to Heaven. From there we enjoyed gorgeous views of Angkor and the surrounding forest. The more than 3,000 apsara dancers carved all over the temple walls uniquely sport 30 different hairstyles.
We continued on to Angkor Thom and the Bayon where we hovered under the ominous glare of hundreds of faces, closely depicting that of Jayavarman VII of course, who oversaw this creation of the 54 towers that make up this structure. Linking this to modern history, the Khmer Rouge organized itself into 54 provinces to closely oversee every behavior of the Khmer people during the war, just as the faces on each Bayon temple look down on its visitors unceasingly. While a bit eerie of a history, the Bayon was one of our favorite temples, which Gabi deemed as a great place to play "hide-and-seek" due to its compact nature and intricate tunnels. The first of three levels depicted the history of the Khmer victory over the Chams in a delicately detailed 1.2km of bas-reliefs or wall engravings, including one image of a gigantic fish eating an antelope and some soldiers getting drunk.
Our grand finale of finales, was the temple that looked the most organic, or most impressive due to it's lack of restoration. Ta Prohm, also nicknamed the Tomb Raider Temple, for it's cameo in Angelina Jolie's hit film, is overgrown to a point of no return. The size of the trees and roots that have overtaken this beautiful sprawling one story structure are testament to the age of the temples, and only add to it's crumbling beauty. Not only were they built a long time ago, but they were also abandoned for long enough to allow for trees, hundreds of years old, to literally take root. When the temple was still inhabited it required 80,000 people to maintain it including 615 apsara dancers. Angelina was so inspired by her visit to Angkor that she took home a Cambodian baby souvenir to remind her daily of the beauty of Cambodia. All jokes aside, little Maddox, an orphan from Battambang, is a pretty lucky kid for the standards of any country. We were inspired too, but we won't be bringing home any babies.
In between temple explorations we relaxed in the comfy backdrop of Siem Reap with restaurants, walking streets, day and night markets and fancy bars all equipped for tourists beyond our budgets. We did manage to eat fried tarantula, a Cambodian delicacy, which sent prickles up our spines (especially the legs) but was actually quite tasty. We also read at a cafe three days in a row, indulging in homemade ginger poppy seed ice cream with rice flour and poppy seed cones, while reading and sipping on cheap 'French Red Table Wine' we snuck into the establishment on our excusable back packers' budget.
Our time in Cambodia would not have been complete without apsara dancing, which we enjoyed in a five star restaurant (we splurged big time) over a mouth watering Khmer buffet dinner and our personally imported 'French Red Table Wine'. We arrived to our reserved table assigned to "Mr. Gabriell, T 2 pax". Apsara dancing is a huge part of Cambodian culture representing ideal feminine beauty. Elegant dancers are often portrayed bare breasted in carvings on Angkor temple walls and in some stories are said to have distracted demons into the submission of Buddhist deities. You may recall from our blog post in Kampot (Seafood! See Food?), that the girls at the orphanage were already practicing apsara dancing from a young age in following with Khmer artistic tradition.
Sadly, this will be our second to last post together. It is so sad that we are skipping an expat party in a hidden garden that we were invited to, to update this very important blog post together and to add photos to the Picasa album, which we hope you will visit. We will be heading to Bangkok at 5:30am tomorrow, crossing our fingers for luck at the border, and already nostalgic to have just under a week of further adventures together on this long trek.
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