The 'Limousine Bus' that carried us from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap did not have a jacuzzi, extra wide reclining seats or champagne on offer ... but it did have a toilet, a kindof-working television/DVD player above the driver and 'snack delivery' of some interesting, but thoroughly unappetising deep-fried, bread-y looking treats. The best part of this bus service is that there is actually 1 person per seat ... so we did not have to sit 3-to-a-seat or to feel sorry for some poor miserable people standing the in the aisles for hours. Compared to some of the buses we've taken on our travels, this really IS a Limousine bus. And it cost all of $12 per person for the 6 hour drive - peanuts!!
We hadn't seen Justin for a few days since he'd left us to go on his man-cation with our friend Rick. For some reason, the time felt much greater than a few days. As we pulled in to the bus station, I looked about apprehensively for someone who was a new shade of brown or had a week-long beard or something unusual ... so that when he did arrive, in the same old t-shirt he had departed in and with just the same 2-day old stubble, I just let out a sigh of relief that he was still my same old Justin, lovely as ever. Then I told him off for being late (text messages didn't make it across).
The bonus of arriving last is that not only did Justin and Rick have a nice hotel waiting for us to settle into, but they had already amassed a wealth of information about Angkor Wat, Bayon and all the other Siem Reap temples that were the focus of our time in the area. And there really IS so much information to know. We had just a few days in which to see the temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Banteay Srey, Ta Prohm, the Landmines Museum, the Tonle Sap lake and its floating villages, and so much more - phew!
We started out right away with a child-free trip to visit the large temple site of Angkor Thom - "the Great city" - which houses the huge and popular temple Bayon amongst others. Bayon turned out to be our favourite temple of all and made a great base for comparison when looking at the styles of all the other temple grounds. And we visited it sans children because the morning started so hot and the children were so tired that we left them with the swimming pool and computers and hotel babysitting staff to watch them for the day - I think they couldn't have been happier if they'd won the lottery!
Approaching Angkor Thom, we passed a line of Asian elephants wandering down the dusty road along the ancient statue lined bridge that transported us over the wide moat and through an impressive, gateway shaped as a huge Buddha and into a post-Angkor period world. As dramatic entrances go, it doesn't get much better than this. The tuk-tuks rambling through the gateway carrying Buddhist monks and Chinese tourists make appropriate background noise.
As we walked near the Bayon temple grounds, we were welcomed by a view of ancient stone pillars, large, crumbling buddha heads and near-vertical steep stone stairways. So much detail to take in. Bayon floated lazily in the midday sun, shaded just slightly by tropical greenery and surrounded on all sides by a dusty road.
We stepped up and into the grounds slowly, trying to decide where to start. Soon the gateways, wide terraces, ambling alleyways, small temples and statues drew me in further and further and after a few moments I realised I had become separated from Justin and Rick. The temple had seemed so much smaller from the outside. Once inside, I found myself in a huge stone maze. The more I walked up steps, along walkways, down and around corners, the more I realised I was thoroughly lost. It seemed that every turn in my path brought me to a mirror image of a hall I had just walked down. They could sell tickets here for the Worlds Biggest Maze. I confess I began to feel a little anxious, sweating a little more than before. This may go some ways towards explaining why I never achieved my girl scout orienteering badge.
We stepped up and into the grounds slowly, trying to decide where to start. Soon the gateways, wide terraces, ambling alleyways, small temples and statues drew me in further and further and after a few moments I realised I had become separated from Justin and Rick. The temple had seemed so much smaller from the outside. Once inside, I found myself in a huge stone maze. The more I walked up steps, along walkways, down and around corners, the more I realised I was thoroughly lost. It seemed that every turn in my path brought me to a mirror image of a hall I had just walked down. They could sell tickets here for the Worlds Biggest Maze. I confess I began to feel a little anxious, sweating a little more than before. This may go some ways towards explaining why I never achieved my girl scout orienteering badge.
If ever there was a great place to be lost in, this is probably it. There is no end to the breathtaking sculptures and designs and no two sections are actually alike. I felt a little like Alice in Wonderland, wandering from one ancient and mythical masterpiece to another. Instead of the grinning Cheshire cat, I was surrounded by tranquil and enlightened Buddhas heads.
Every five minutes or so, I'd come across another little inner temple area with another golden, enshrined Buddha, each a little different than the ones I'd seen already. I stopped to pay respects to each Buddha and the person minding the Buddha would pass me sticks of incense and chant over me as she tied another colorful thread-bracelet around my wrist. But all the bracelets in the world weren't helping me to find my way back and it must have been 45 minutes or so before I finally caught up with the guys. I only achieved this by stepping outside the temple and backing off until I could see Justin and Rick appear on the outskirts of the structure.
Every five minutes or so, I'd come across another little inner temple area with another golden, enshrined Buddha, each a little different than the ones I'd seen already. I stopped to pay respects to each Buddha and the person minding the Buddha would pass me sticks of incense and chant over me as she tied another colorful thread-bracelet around my wrist. But all the bracelets in the world weren't helping me to find my way back and it must have been 45 minutes or so before I finally caught up with the guys. I only achieved this by stepping outside the temple and backing off until I could see Justin and Rick appear on the outskirts of the structure.
As if Bayon wasn't enough to keep a tourist busy, there is a whole city of temples to visit within the great walls of Angkor Thom. One length of the perimeter alone is a mile long. This is no place for those who tire easily - and tuk-tuks are not allowed to transport folks from site to site like golf-carts. Feet are the only form of transport. The day of our visit, the sweltering heat was enough to make walking from one temple to another seem like one of those dreams of walking through quicksand while moving in slow motion. But there is always one more beautiful ruin just ahead, placed like a dangling carrot and always seeming closer than it actually is.
Just as we arrived at the end of the ruins, the dark clouds gathered and a rain of biblical proportions fell in a heavy sheet towards us, chasing us into a conveniently located covered restaurant. The rains stormed and raged for a half an hour while we ate lunch and then tapered off to nothing by the time we finished. That's called good timing.
The following day, we headed out to Angkor Wat, the most famous of the Angkor sites. The Angkor Wat temple is supposed to be the largest temple in the world. We again had the luxury of visiting the temples without kiddies - the staff in the hotel were very good with them and the kids themselves would have whined until they melted in the heat.
Angkor Wat is impressively large and was in better shape, as whole buildings, than the temple ruins of Angkor Thom. However, the tourists were like ants all over the site and it was difficult to find the peace for contemplation and appreciation here that we had found in Bayon. Touristy attractions like period-dressed dancers were found roaming about ready to pose in a photo with you for a little money. Guided tours meandered just ahead and behind us most of our way through. There were many guards and the site is understandably well-policed.
Justin wasn't allowed to enter the main temple at the centre because he was wearing a tank top - bare shoulders aren't allowed inside temples. So he waited below as Rick and I ascended the steep staircase into the temple. Although it is undeniably beautiful, none of our little group thought Angkor Wat was as dramatic or photogenic as Bayon ..... maybe because of the scaffolding that covers part of the structure right now?
Walking away from Angkor Wat, I spotted a group of children who were lined up on the edge of the moat-bridge. They were taking turns doing somersaults off the bridge and into the water below. What brave little guys (and girls!) and very enterprising too. There is always a new way to busk for a buck.
The following day, with a lot of kicking and screaming (on all sides), we managed to cajole our children out to one of the most beautiful ruins, Ta Prohm. The lure was that it was one of the key sites used in filming the Lara Croft Tomb Raider movie - unfortunately, none of our boys had seen the movie, rendering that description almost useless, drats!!
The weather just did not help. It was so hot that day that we were soaked in sweat and sticky with dust just moments after leaving the hotel. The kids turned some interesting new shades of red - redder even than their hair - and this was accompanied by relentless complaints of heat and tiredness. I could empathise, knowing that these kids have spent more than half a year already with almost daily visits to some must-see spot or other so that the effect of saying 'Today, we are going to visit ...' can be a deadly statement in its own right. But even the kids had to admit (some of the time) that, sweltering sun and all, Ta Prohm was a dramatically wild sight with its Indiana Jones jungle environment (yes, they do know Indie!). Ta Prohm has the feel of an adventure beckoning you to enter.
Tall trees grew straight up out of ancient stone ruins with roots that appeared to devour the structures beneath. Lack of restoration means part of the site is not accessible, but also adds to the charm of this Angkor jungle ruin.
The temple made a long-lasting impression on all of us, and not just because of the heat. The boys loved climbing around on the big, unstructured rock mounds and did appreciate the amazing giant trees even through the heat of the day. But they had soon taken in their fill of the temple structures unlike us adults who were armed with cameras. With our cameras we were as excited as kids in Disneyland, looking at each zone from different angles. In some places the light fell through the roots and dappled onto stone engravings and in others shady doorways looked in on secret courtyards or piles of statues waiting to be discovered.
After a couple of hours our boys were completely tired and ready to return. We called it a day and made our way to our 'regular' - the Red Piano restaurant in Pub Street of Siem Reap. Before the boys and I had arrived, Justin and Rick had become devotees of the Tomb Raider drink that is sold there - and not just because Rick actually has a larger than life sized Lara Croft model at home, or because the drink was supposedly created by Miss Jolie herself during the filming... but also because every 10th Tomb Raider drink ordered in the restaurant is free. Of course, Justin and Rick felt it was their mission to obtain these free drinks ... sometimes successfully and sometimes not so much, but always they were happy at the end of the day.
In another mis-adventure, we let our tuk-tuk drivers steer us to a boat ride on a canal to the Tonle Sap lake for a visit to a floating village. We were told it was a charming village and that we could visit the school there. There are some beautiful floating villages on the Tonle Sap and we were looking forward to visiting one. But we were surprised when we arrived to purchase tickets and found the boat fare was several times more expensive than the visits to the temples. It seemed extortionate for the area, but the ticket booth and sales folks looked legit and had a governmental air.
We were the only tourists on our little boat and it quickly set off down the muddy brown waters of the canal towards the Tonle Sap. Small boats carrying locals selling sodas and snacks whizzed up close to our boat a couple of times and once a little girl of maybe 11 roped her boat to ours to jump on board and offer us sodas. Her father seemed confident in her quick reflexes as she scrambled quickly into our boat and then back to hers while we were both in motion. These were obviously people who grew up on the waters.
We passed several floating homes on the way to the lake, though the canal would often narrow to a point where we could barely pass boats coming from the opposite direction. In fact, the water was so shallow that we did once get lodged in the mud as another boat passed us and it took all of the boat crew to edge us back out with a long pole. I think they were relieved that they didn't have to jump in and push the boat off. The water levels were about 1-1.5m deep compared with the 12m level during monsoon season.
As we approached the floating village, we were interested to see lots of little floating houses of differing sizes and sturdiness. There were stores and a medical clinic and even a floating basketball court - though on the whole the area looked very poor. Very soon after arriving in the village area, we were besieged by several small boats that would pull up alongside us, usually carrying a mother and some small children in torn, filthy clothes. Sometimes the children were carrying snakes as some bizarre form of entertainment and sometimes they tried to sell us a soda - but mainly they were just out begging for 'Dollar, one dollar?' The poverty and begging are never easy to see and of course we were prime targets for this form of busking.
We were surprised when, instead of going over to the school, our boat pulled up outside a floating shop and we were then told how the school was not just a school but was a floating orphanage as well and that the children were at the most dire poverty levels. We were then enticed to purchase as much rice, noodles and bottled water as we could to carry with us to the orphanage. What person would feel they could say no? In the heat of the moment, we offered to buy a huge sack of rice, it was the least we could do, we felt. And we threw in some bottled water and noodles as well. We paid $80 for the large sack of rice - a value we later found in town should have been around $30. At the time, we felt that the manner of springing this shopping trip on us was poorly done .... looking back later, we felt totally swindled and suckered. We heard stories from others of the folks in the store selling the rice, carrying it to the orphanage and then returning it to the store in a well-orchestrated scam.
The orphanage was a pretty grim place, with way too many children running around in a relatively small area. The children themselves were ragged but friendly and well-behaved. Rick and Justin jumped right in and started playing with the kids, throwing them up in the air and making them giggle. The children loved every minute of that attention. I spent time talking with the 'teacher' on the boat about the resources and needs of the orphanage and school. Speaking later, we were of mixed minds as to whether this was actually an orphanage or more of a collection of the village children at the village school. We wouldn't have been surprised to see that most of them go off to other boats at the end of the day. In reality, the whole village seemed fairly poor and the kids in the 'orphanage' boat seemed slightly better off than the numerous kids out begging with their snakes.
Either way, we were appalled to see other tourist boats like ours pulling up to the 'orphanage' with more tourists. Some others had purchased supplies from the shop and some hadn't - the huge sacks of rice lay stacked upon each other and looked enough to feed a party of 700 for a few days. The other tourists who had arrived after us walked about the boat snapping photos of the 'orphans', sticking huge camera lenses into their faces without hardly a smile or a friendly word and then walked off.
It really disgusted me that these kids were being used as a tourist attraction. I felt we should have been warned about the visit to the shop and the orphanage before our boat set out for the village and this whole 'tour' stank of foul play. Who knows who was making money out of this situation: the shop owner, our tuk-tuk drivers, the village, someone from outside .. it could have been anyone. For the kids sake, I hope the orphanage or school does actually get proceeds from these tours and that the purchased supplies are really used for the children. Who knows?
Just further on from the orphanage/school, our boat docked at a floating souvenir store and restaurant where we could walk up on a deck and see the view of the village. Some areas of the village were charming. Many homes had pets wandering about the porches and the sunlight fading across the waters created a beautiful rosy-sun dappled scene. I struggled to find the beauty in this scene however as we could hear the mothers in small boats below berating their children loudly for not getting enough dollars out of us. This was definitely an experience I will not forget, for better or worse.
We returned to the boat docks in time to see the sunset in full colour over the waters. The men in our group were ready with cameras in hand to shoot the elusive colourful sunsets they wanted to capture here in Siem Reap.
Back in town we had a day 'off' from walking around temples and decided to visit one of the masses of pampering spas in Siem Reap. The town seems to have more masseuses than any other occupation. There are all levels: luxury day spas, quick nip-in-and-out shops and also, when the men are alone, massages 'with a happy ending' or 'massage-boom-boom'. We only opted for a pampering day spa version, so I can't tell you much about the others.
The massage was the perfect way to soothe our achy muscles and feet after all the walking we'd been doing. Bodia spa, recommended on trip advisor, turned out to be a perfect spot with professional therapists, a clean environment and a european-style list of treatments. And, did I mention cheap?! Visits to floating markets may not be cheap, but massages are so well priced you feel you owe it to yourself and the establishment to come back for another.
We took in a regional Apsara dinner dance show as a cultural enlightenment for one evening. The performers were beautifully decked out, the music on local folk instruments was mesmerising and the precise and intricate dance routines were made to look effortless by the professional dancers. The dinner buffet was very well done and reasonably tasty as well. It is the sort of place we typically avoid as it screams 'tourist attraction' and you'd never find a local there ... but as a chance to have a glimpse of traditional dances and costumes it was a good spot.
As a finale to our temple visits, we chose to go further afield to the 10th century temple of Banteay Srei. It is said to have the finest, detailed carvings of any of the Angkor temples. We had to trek 26 km from Siem Reap to arrive there. We found Banteay Srei to be tranquil with few tourists, which was a good reason to visit all on its own. Nestled in a green countryside, the temple is delicate, with intricate carvings set in pink sandstone. Surrounding the temple is a picturesque moat filled with water lilies. Compared to Ankor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm, the temple is small and you can easily walk all around it in about 20 minutes. But it was a beautiful finish to our temple visits, slightly more genteel and romantic than its counterparts.
We separated into two tuk-tuks on the way home - Justin and Rick to visit the Bakeng Hill for possible sunset pics and the boys and I to return to the hotel. On our way back, we saw lots of monkeys at the edges of the forest along our road. We asked our Tuk-Tuk driver to stop so we could see them up close. We were in no hurry! A local lady stopped her bike and sold us some nuts and seeds that the monkeys like to eat and, like we saw a few others doing, we fed them too.
We knew from previous experience to observe the monkeys first for signs of aggression. This was a group of mamas and babies and they were very calm and gentle so we enjoyed handing out our nibbles for a while. Sam, Ben and Andy loved this so much that they persuaded me to buy a second and then a third lot of snacks - I am such a sucker! But these monkeys were being very sweet and it was lovely to see the mamas sharing their food with little ones. One pregnant monkey got a little overexcited to grab more food, but she looked to be carrying at least two near-term babies in her womb, so who could blame her for being peckish??
As a final night out for dinner, we decided to stray from our Red Piano to the Cambodian BBQ where we cooked our meat on table top grills as the juices from the meat sizzled their way into the tray of vegetable broth below. This reminded us of cooking steak on our individual stone grills in New Zealand. There is nothing quite like eating meat straight off the grill. We sat next to a couple from Hong Kong who were on their honeymoon and they kept taking photos of themselves with Ben and Sam. It was a lot of fun, a great last supper for Siem Reap and also a goodbye to Rick who was heading to the beaches in southern Cambodia as we travelled to Thailand the next day. We all loved having his company - and close to the line sense of humour - through our days in Siem Reap.
For all the Siem Reap pics:
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