I ended up sleeping horribly Monday night because I was so scared of getting mosquito bites. Luckily I didn't get any...then. The same was not true for Tuesday night - I got two on my wrist that night. Let's hope I don't come down with anything in a couple of weeks. After getting up around 6am, we got ready to leave for Angkor Wat by 7:30 that morning. Again we were able to go in a car, which made it nice to get around the temples quickly.
Here is a picture of some water buffalo along the drive to one of the temples:
If you are like me, you probably thought Angkor Wat was just one temple and that was that. Wrong! Angkor Wat is the name of the most well-known temple, but there are dozens of them all in the area. You pay $20 for a ticket for one day (free if you are Cambodian) and then show that ticket at the different temples you go to. We started by going to Bantay Sreay, which took about 20 minutes to drive to. They are made of pink sandstone (or something) and feature lots of asparas (dancing women).
Pictures of Banteay Srey:
Driving back from there, we stopped at the Landmine Museum. This is an interesting place and used to be located in the town of Siem Reap. It was started by a man who was conscripted as a child soldier during the Khmer Rouge and later was in the army when they set a lot of the land mines. In the 1990s he started deactivating them on his own and later worked with NGOs to continue doing this. We saved a lot of the mines and other bombs that he deactivated and eventually started this museum to teach others about the dangers of land mines. At the museum he also has a place for some children to live and attend school - most of them injured by land mines.
A small building that holds hundreds of land mines, in all different styles and from all different countries. All of these have been deactivated, of course.
What I didn't realize when we went to this museum is that one of Savada's sisters (one who works at the travel office in town, not at the house) actually was injured by a land mine and now has a fake leg. About 10 years ago she lived in Pailin, which is right on the Thai border and has lots and lots of land mines. She was married and taking lunch to her husband who was a farmer. A lot of people were gathered around to look at a land mine that someone had found, and on the way to see it, she stepped on another one and lost her leg. In the areas up around Pailin, Siem Reap, and Battambang there are lots of land mine victims because this was the most heavily armed part of the country - the Khmer Rouge stronghold until the 1998 and to keep the Thais out.
On the drive, we passed a number of interesting things but were going so fast it was hard to take pictures. This is a neat one that I caught!
At this roadside stand I bought a few things - two woven bags and a wooden stork thing. It is hard to describe but very neat. I got all three things for a total of $7.
After that visit, we continued back to Ta Phrom, which probably was my favorite temple. It is one of the most photographed ones because it has the trees growing out of the the buildings. All of the trees made it so much cooler than the other areas where the sun just beat down on you.
Pictures of Ta Phrom:
All of the people taking pictures just like me :)
Then we went to Bayon temple. Although it is within a larger temple complex, we just went to Bayon itself. This temple has 216 carved stone faces on its walls and was pretty impressive to see.
Picutres of Bayon:
After these three temples and the museum, we went back to the house for lunch and a rest. All of that walking was exhausting! We then headed back around 1 or 2pm to go to Angkor Wat itself. It was so hot by the time we got there, but it is very impressive. I thik the best part is looking at it from the outside. Once you are inside, it is neat, but not the same because you can't see everything around you.
The approach to Angkor Wat:
Can you see the monkeys in this picture? They were wreaking havoc in one of the halls!
Me with some beautiful back lighting :)
One of the two libraries at the temple. They used to be filled with religious documents.
One of the iconic views of Angkor Wat with the reflection from the pond:
One of the amazing things about this visit was seeing all of the different visitors. People from all over Asia, Europe, etc. And, there were Cambodian guides who spoke all the different languages. It was pretty impressive. Apparently the largest group of Asian visitors usually is Korean, which surprised me a little. Korea is fairly far away from Cambodia, and I guess I have never thought about Koreans as a big tourist group before.
A monk at Angkor Wat:
If you would like to read a little more about the different temples and sites, here is a link to a wikitravel site that seems pretty good: http://wikitravel.org/en/Angkor_Archaeological_Park
After we went to the temples (just those 4 for my one day whirlwind visit), we drove out on the other side of town to visit the silk farm and weaving workshop of Artisans d'Angkor. It was really really impressive. I am not sure if it is just me, but I had always imagined that the little silk worms sort of made silk strands as they ate, but apparently that is all wrong! The silk actually comes from the cocoon!! Talk about a crazy process just to get the silk ready to weave, much less the weaving process itself. I have no idea how people can sell some of these things some cheaply!! I just hope it was machine made instead of hand made. What an amazing and labor intensive process. Again, I have lots of pictures, so here are just a few.
The cocoons:
Weaving one of the complicated patterns:
Here is the website of Artisan's d'Angkor: http://www.artisansdangkor.com/
One the way back we stopped at a lake, really a bantay that was dug by hand by one of the ancient kings. While there Savada got all these different meat things on sticks (frog legs, frog bodies, fish, birds). We also all had the khmer noodle soup again, but another kind (there are two flavors). Delicious!
Some of the assorted meats lined up. I am pretty ure my sister would go crazy at a place like this, being a meatatarian :)
Me eating the soup - yummy:
Of course, after all that snacking I wasn't really hungry for dinner. Even though I had hoped to go to one of the restaurants that had some dancing, we ended up going to her sister's house in town because she wanted to cook. Before dinner, Savada and I walked around for a little bit to get hungry again! We stopped by a store called Bloom, which is near the market. They also have a small shop in the Russian Market in Phnom Penh. It is a fair trade place that makes bags. The woman who started it has a blog online about her experiences: http://cambodiacalling.blogspot.com/. Although some entires are about other things in Cambodia, some are about the business and offer some comments on the difficulty of doing business in this country. It is interesting to look at if you ever have time.
Around 6:30 we went back to Savada's sister's house for dinner. Here is a picture of me with some of the "meat on a stick" that we purchased earlier:
Afterwards we walked around a little more to see the new night market. It was very nice and completely empty of shoppers! I ended up getting a few more things there...of course. I ended up getting a silk scarf for about 1/2 price which was nice. I also got something for mom or maybe for one of the people I am getting wedding gifts for. I also got to small things of spices - lemongrass and amok (for the national fish dish here - baked in a banana leaf). After that we got some ice cream, actually gelato and sorbet. Savada had passion fruit, and I had kaffir lime and lemon. It was nice and refreshing. There were so many interesting flavors that I wish I could have tried lots more - things like lychee, honey and ginger, etc etc.
Wednesday:
We got up early the next morning and left for the bus. We took a nicer bus home and only stopped once on the way back (in Kampong Thom, I think).
And, that is all of my trip to Siem Reap!
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