The Incredible Temples at Angkor

Siem Reap & Angkor, Cambodia
March 24-25

The entrance to the Temples at Angkor Thom

What a whirlwind! We arrived in Siem Reap late in the afternoon of March 23rd after a very long bus ride through the countryside of Cambodia. The bus ride itself was about 6 hours but we made a few stops along the way. The first stop that day was a town called Skuon, affectionately known as Spiderville. (If you have spider "issues" you may want to skip this paragraph!) Skuon is known as Spiderville because the local delicacy is (gulp) deep fried spiders. Now, I have expanded my horizons quite a bit on this journey and I consider myself a very adventurous eater, but I have to draw the line somewhere and that somewhere is apparently spiders! Actually, the whole stop was just creepy and exhausting. As soon we stopped at the village market, the bus was surrounded by kids selling bananas. They were very aggressive, and you had to say no about 10 times before they left you alone. Then there were the guys with the deep fried spiders, some of whom had giant live spiders crawling on them. Only one person in our group, Aidan, was adventurous enough to try the spiders and I was happy to leave that to him. Personally, I could not get out of that place fast enough!

The rest of the ride was long but uneventful, and by the time we got to Siem Reap everyone was just happy to be off the bus and checked in at the hotel. The hotel was fine. The rooms were a little dark and the bathrooms were not very nice, but by now we were used to all that. You just have to remember not to drink or brush your teeth with the tap water and all will be fine. And since bottled water was only about 25 cents, it wasn't really a big deal. Other than that, things seemed pretty clean.

Our hotel room in Siem Reap

Dinner that night was at a place on Pub Street in Siem Reap, which is basically the touristy section of town, but still a fun place to visit. We picked a dinner place strictly for the location, which never bodes well. So needless to say, the food wasn't great but the company was lovely because we had a visitor! Our friend Meredith from the Vietnam part of the tour was in Siem Reap doing the Angkor region on her own. Meredith, if you are reading this, we are all impressed with you! Meredith managed to make her way down to Seim Reap from Vietnam, found herself a great hotel and then hired a Tuk Tuk driver (for $12 I believe) for the day to bring her around the temples and then back to the city. It was great to see Meredith and wonderful to hear her stories of what she had seen in the last few days. Even though we had only met a few weeks before, it felt like a reunion with an old friend.

Pam, Nikita and our old friend Meredith

The slogan above Shaun's head cracks me up.

The next morning our group met up in the hotel lobby at 8:30AM for our first big day at Angkor. Shaun and I had been looking forward to this for months. Angkor is the region of Cambodia that was the seat of the Khmer Empire for 600 years, from about 800-1400 AD. Within the region of Angkor, there are roughly 1000 temples over a 390 square mile area, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat, which means "Temple City". Angkor Wat itself was built between 1114 and 1150 by King Suryavarman II and it was dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. Lesser known, but more fascinating in my opinion was Angkor Thom (the Great City). Angkor Thom was built in the late 12th century by King Jayavarman VII. During that period, Angkor Thom had over a million residents, which made this area the largest urban civilization of it's time. To put it in perspective, London only had 300,000 residents during that same era.

Our two days of touring the Angkor complex were amazing. The first morning we arrived at the visitors center and got our picture taken and printed on our passes. It only took a few minutes to get that sorted before it was time to explore! We began our tour at the temple of Preah Khan and then moved on to Angkor Thom, including the amazing Bayon with its giant carved faces. Even in the brutal heat it was amazing and the hours flew by. Before we knew it it was time to eat. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant right in the middle of the Angkor complex just as it started to downour. The lunch was delicious and it was nice to sit and relax for a bit before continuing our tour. When we finshed up the rain was still coming down pretty hard, but luckily our next stop was a 35k drive out to Banteay Srey, a 1000 year old temple made out of pink sandstone and dedicated to the women of the time, which was nice. By the time we arrived at Banteay Srey the rain had let up and it had even made the heat a little more bearable. After exploring Banteay Srey we headed back toward the main temple area of Angkor again and stopped at one last temple called Pre Rup, built around 960AD by King Rajendravarman.

On day two we met in the lobby at 5AM and drove out to Angkor again, this time to the most famous of the temples, Angkor Wat. The bus driver dropped us off and we followed our local guide on a 10 minute walk in the darkness to a small temple where we sat and waited for the first light of morning to rise over Angkor Wat. After watching the sunrise, we headed in to explore the temples. It took a few hours to cover all that ground, so when we finished we stopped at a little place nearby for some breakfast before continuing on. The last stop was Ta Promh, also known as the Tomb Raider temple because the Angelina Jolie movie by the same name that was shot there. The whole thing was incredible and we probably could have spent a week there without running out of things to see. It's just impossible to decribe it all so I've decided to just post a zillion pics. I hope the pictures will give you some idea of how amazing this place was!

Our very first temple was Preah Kahn

Outside Preah Kahn

I just loved how the trees had taken their rightful place in the jungle

Preah Kahn

Shaun and Aidan exploring the temples

You can still see every detail of the beautiful Apsara dancers after 800 years or so!

Bayon at Angkor Thom was my favorite place. All those huge smiling faces carved in stone. It was magical

A better shot of one of the faces

The reliefs on the walls were incredible. Narratives carved in stone with amazing detail.

Shaun thought he was Rocky after climbing all the steps to get up here.

And more faces, faces, faces

I love this shot because it gives you an idea of the scopeof this place. You can almost imagine hw magnificent it must have been back when it was a thriving city.

The stairs were crazy steep

The royal swimming pool

The heat was absolutely brutal, but I would do it all again

Taking shade under a tree. Our local guide (waving) was absolutely wonderful. His love for this place was contagious

This one had safety steps thank goodness

My lunch was served in a hollowed out coconut!

Banteay Srey was so totally different from Angkor Thom

The interior of Banteay Srey

The colors were absolutely gorgeous

Taken from the top of Pre Rup, which I climbed! Getting back down was the hard part

Taken from the top of Pre Rup

Day two started very early. You can't see it here but our local guide brought us all coffees while we waited for Sunrise!

Sunrise over Angkor Wat

Good thing we had a local guide because Sareth was quite sleepy

Every picture tells a story

The back of Angkor Wat, you can tell by the lotus shaped towers

We climbed to the third level. It was quite high up...

But also very peaceful.

As you can tell, some of the faces on the stone fence have been restored

Our last temple was Ta Prohm- now known as the Tomb Raider temple

Apparently this little carving at Ta Prohm is the subject of a LOT of debate. Did the Khmer know about the stegosaurus or do we just see what we want to see when we look at this?

Alex in front of one of the crazy trees at Ta Prohm

The whole group at Ta Prohm

Shaun looks shocked for a reason. If you stand inside this spot and bang on your chest it sounds like a drum. A very loud drum!

Dwarfed by of one of the crazy trees

Sometimes the destroyed bits were the prettiest

Sareth was showing us how to feed the monkey a banana when all of a sudden...

It jumped on his head! You can't tell from the picture but he was quite freaked out.

Farewell to Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and all the other beautiful temples. And farewell to the monkeys!

Cambodia Dark and Light

Phnom Penh, Cambodia
March 21-23

Beautiful water lilies at the Royal Palace

On the morning of March 21st, our new group boarded a public bus for the drive to Phnom Penh Cambodia. The bus was better than I expected it to be (yes I did have visions of live chickens running up the aisles) but it was still a public bus with a single smelly toilet in the back. It was the kind of toilet you don't use unless it's a dire emergency. I used it twice. So clearly there was a problem. I'm sure you think this is over sharing, but I vowed to write about the good, the bad and the ugly and this was the ugly!

On the public bus from Vietnam to Cambodia


To be honest, I was amazed that it took this long. We had been in Vietnam for 15 days and we had eaten everything in sight, including local street food that was probably not prepared in what you would consider high hygiene standards, and we had had no stomach issues at all. So it actually took me by surprise when I started feeling unwell. I had just begun taking an anti malarial drug called Malarone for the Cambodia leg of the trip and my first assumption was that this must have been a side effect of the Malarone. After a few days it became clear it wasn't the Malarone, but luckily our travel clinic had armed us with antibiotics for exactly this situation. One z-pack and I was all fixed up!

So that afternoon when we arrived in Phnom Penh I opted out of the group activity for the first time on the trip. It was a cyclo ride through Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia and everyone else in the new group was doing it. I knew deep down that I would be playing Russian Roulette by doing a long cyclo tour, but I still felt strangely guilty for bagging on the activity. Besides the guilt, I also hated the idea of just lying around our hotel room all afternoon since the room was pretty spartan. So when our new guide Sareth pointed out the National Museum just a few blocks from our hotel, I decided it was the perfect place for me.

My visit that afternoon was less than an hour but it was wonderful. Cambodia is so different from Vietnam. Vietnam seemed like it practiced "religion lite"; a mix of a few little things they had picked up here and there from Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism with a few other things mixed in, like bits of Hinduism and Catholicism. As Bon kept telling us, the Vietnamese aren't very religious but they are very superstitious! And so the buildings didn't really seem to reflect any one style. In Cambodia, the ancient religious traditions came through much more vibrantly. Most people think of Buddhism when they think of Cambodia, but you only need to take one step inside the National Museum to feel the strong tradition of Hinduism. The elephant/man Ganesh and the mystical dancing women called Apsaras were everywhere. It was amazing to have driven for a few hours and to feel like you were now in a whole new world! Even the building that housed the museum was completely different than anything we had seen. The Khmer style of architecture is extremely ornate. The building was painted a beautiful burnt red and it had these "chofah" on the top, sweeping out from the gables like the pointed tusks of a hundred elephants.

The National Museum with it's Khmer Architecture

You couldn't take pictures inside the National Museum but the grounds were lovely

The other thing I loved about the National Museum was the different displays on the Temples of Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat was the main reason we chose to go to Cambodia and the museum totally whetted my appetite for that experience. They had lots of artifacts and photographs and even a video simulation of what Angkor Wat looked like at it's peak in the twelfth century. By the time I left the museum that day I was even more excited to see the amazing City of Temples that is Angkor Wat. But first, we needed to explore the Capital city.

That evening we had a group dinner at a place not far from the hotel and called it an early night. We had a big day ahead of us and this one was going to be tough. Cambodia, like many of the surrounding countries, has had a very violent and troubled past, and one of the most violent periods in it's history took place in the 1970's when the Khmer Rouge came to power under a despicable character named Pol Pot. The area in and around Phnom Penh, became host to some of the most horrific war crimes of the last 50 years. You can't understand Cambodia without understanding the events of that time, so our agenda for the next day was a visit to both the Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields.

Group dinner the first night in Cambodia

First up that day was the Genocide Museum, also known as S-21. When the Khmer Rouge came to power on April 17,1975, many Cambodian people were actually under the impression that this might be good for their country because it meant a long civil war was over. Even when Pol Pot ordered the evacuation of the city of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge Soldiers told the evacuees that it was because the Americans were going to bomb the city and that it would only be for a "a few days". Instead, the city residents were shipped off to forced labor farms in the countryside so that Pol Pot could begin constructing his "Agrarian Utopia".

In this new society, religion, money, education and private property were all banned and family bonds meant nothing. But the worst was yet to come. Under the new regime, one of the biggest crimes you could commit was to be suspected of being an intellectual. Anyone who was thought to be an intellectual was immediately executed. That included anyone who spoke a foreign language or wore glasses, which they considered to be a sign of higher education. Things continued to spiral out of control from there and by the time the Khmer Rouge was taken out of power 4 years later, more than two million of Cambodia's eight million people had either been executed, starved to death or died from disease in the work camps at the hands of these evil men.

The Genocide Museum is on the site of Security Prison 21 (S-21), a former high school that was turned into torture chambers for the Khmer Rouge Soldiers. At any one time, between 1000-1500 people were held there. I will spare you the details of what they did to these poor souls, but lets just say that there were only a few lucky ones who managed to kill themselves. The rest were tortured until the Khmer Rouge had gotten whatever confessions they needed and then killed and buried on the grounds. Sadly, they soon ran out of room on the grounds of S21. They needed a new place to do the killing, and so the "Killing Fields" were born.

S-21 The classrooms of this former high school became torture chambers under the Khmer Rouge

The best known of the "Killing Fields", Choeung Ek, is about 15k outside of Phnom Penh. It is believed that the Khmer Rouge killed over 17,000 people at Choeung Ek alone. (There are thousands of other sites like Choeng Ek throughout the country). At this site, they have found 8,895 bodies in the mass graves that have been exhumed, but they have only excavated about 85 of the 129 mass graves. The ones that have been excavated were left as open pits, some with small wooden signs identifying the type of victims. One of the graves contained hundreds of headless corpses, Some of the graves just contained women, children and infants. In most cases, the people were bludgeoned to death or killed in some other horrifying way, because bullets were considered too expensive. Because many of the graves have not been exhumed, clothing and bones often still surface after heavy rains.

The memorial stupa at Cheoung Ek

Inside the memorial stupa, just level after level of remains


In 1995 a memorial was constructed at Choeung Ek to the victims who died there. It is a Buddhist Stupa that has glass sides. Inside, there are 13 levels and each of the levels is filled with the skeletal remains of the people who were killed at Choeung Ek. It was quite poignant and sad. But nothing is more sad than the fact that almost nobody who perpetrated these crimes was ever brought to justice. Only one man, a man known as Duch who ran S-21 has admitted guilt and his original sentence was 35 years!! (It was later upped to a life sentence but the guy is in his eighties now so what good does that do). From what I understand the government is still so corrupt and so many are former Khmer Rouge members, that they have actually protected a lot of these characters over the years. I left the Killing Fields with a bitter taste in my mouth.

Thankfully, we were now done with that part of Cambodia's history. Our next stop was lunch, and the place we went to was the perfect antidote to the evil we had just seen. Friends Restaurant is a training restaurant in Phnom Penh that takes street kids and teaches them the skills they need to get a job in the hospitality industry. Phnom Penh alone is estimated to have over 20,000 street kids, so this is a very worthwhile enterprise! The place was charming, the waiters were friendly and hard working and the food was excellent all around.

That afternoon we had free time but it was our last day so we used our time well! First up was a trip to the National Museum with Shaun and some other folks who hadn't been yet. Next up was the Royal Palace. It was quite beautiful and once again had the vibrant colors and fantastic Khmer Architecture I had come to love. We explored the grounds for a few hours before heading back to the hotel to clean up for dinner.

The grounds of the Royal Palace

Just loved the colors

Aidan, Pam, Nikita and Shaun climbing up to one of the temples. It was about 96 degrees that day but you must wear long pants or skirts and cover your shoulders out of respect

One of the Stupas on the grounds

For dinner that night, our Cambodia tour leader Sareth asked if anyone wanted to go out to a local place for some "meat". One of the big specialties of Phnom Penh is whole cow slowly grilled on a giant rotisserie. (I know, maybe not so sanitary but that's why we had shots before we came!) Shaun, Aidan, Pam, Nikita and I all decided to go. So we jumped in a couple of Tuk Tuks and headed over to the meat place with Sareth.

On the Tuk Tuk ride to get some meat

If you like beef, this is the place for you. They basically bring everyone a big plate of meat and the only decision you need to make is whether you want it on the bone or not. (Normally I would say yes to the bone but we all thought that might be just a little too risky) It was all served with a bowl of fried rice and chilled raw vegetables. And of course, beer to drink. Like many local places, the tables were out on the sidewalk. And even though it was nighttime, it was still hot as hades out so when the waitress came over with big chunks of ice for our beer we took her up on it!

Eating big plates of meat on the streets of Phnom Penh

After dinner Sareth headed out with friends and the five of us went to a bar called Kwest to see some jazz. The music was nice, but to be honest, my favorite thing about that night was the locale. The bar was on the ground floor of the Amanjaya hotel and it was really lovely. It was air conditioned and had comfy couches and chairs and the bathrooms were spotless. Maybe it was a sign that I was getting travel weary, but I was absolutely thrilled to be able to use a clean, modern bathroom! And so we had a nice last night in Phnom Penh with some dancing, some good music and good friends. It was a good introduction to Cambodia, but I was ready to move on to the next part of our journey, one of the most highly anticipated stops of the whole trip. We were heading to Seim Reap and the temples of Angkor Wat!

Drinks at the nice clean air conditioned bar!