You know digital cameras are a great invention and I love them. They do present a problem when you return from holiday though. You take so many pictures that you have to sift through them all to find the good ones and the ones you want to keep. I suppose I could be more judicious about when to take a picture in the first place as I did in the days of film but that’s unlikely to happen. So here I sit trying to figure out the best pictures to tell the rest of the story.
We arrived in Siem Reap Cambodia in the afternoon of Feb 10. It was warm in Hoi An and Da Nang but it was nothing compared to Cambodia. While not that much further south in latitude the temperature and humidity were quite a bit higher. Our stay in Siem Reap was very enjoyable and very sweaty. A word of advice, try to relax in A/C between 11 am and 3 pm. These are the hottest hours of the day and the locals seem to spend it sleeping. Except for the ones trying to sell us trinkets and books. We didn’t do this, but we were short on time and there was a lot to see.
Tourism has exploded here like in Vietnam, largely due to a somewhat stable government, although corruption is a big problem. As a result there are many new and nice hotels that have been built in the last few years. The town looks a lot different than 10 years ago according to my parents. The town itself is not particularly speacial but it is 6 km south of the Angkor park area and it is thus the jumping off point to Angkor Wat and the other temples.
If you don’t know much about Angkor Wat it is important to point out that the temple at Ankor Wat is not the only thing here. There are many other temples around the area that are very impressive. Angkor Wat happens to be the biggest of the bunch. It is also the temple the appears in the middle of the Cambodian Flag. These temples, while close, are not really within walking distance if you want to see many of them. Wheels are required, and hiring a car, a tuck-tuck, motorbike or bicycle is recommended.
We hired a car and English speaking guide for our first day there and it really makes the visit to the temples good. Without a guide or guidebook, the temples might appear as simply a bunch of rocks. 
Guides are available for 11 different languages and they all are certified by the government. Our guide did an excellent job of explaining the history of the sites we were seeing, their importance and most importantly explained the many carvings found all over the temples. I’m not going to recite the history here as there are big long books on the subject. Kids sell you copies of these (not publisher copies but copy copies) at every temple . You have to negotiate though as their starting price is the suggested retail price. OK if it was the real deal but I negotiated a book easily down form $30 to $10.
In brief, the area grew in prominence from 800 – 1400 A.D. After this point the King of the time moved the capital to Phenom Penh. Speculation is this had something to do with war with groups in what is now Thailand. Anyway after this time period it seemed to decline and disappear. For much of the time it was powerful the state religion was Hinduism. A breif interval of Buddhism occured when a large number of temples were constructed but the coutrny returned to Hinduism for a stretch and then back to Buddhism which is the dominant regilion to this day. The switching back and forth resulted in most of the Buddhist images being removed from the temples constructed in the relatively short period of Buddhism between two periods of Hinduism. You can see the areas at the temples where the images have been chiselled off. Interestingly the final return to Buddhism didn’t seem to affect the Hindu images.
We saw Angkor Thom as our first site of the day and it is quite famous for all the faces that are carved into it. It is quite beautiful and the history interesting. It is hard to pick one picture that well represents beauty of Angkor Thom but here are a couple choice pictures.
We of visited Angkor Wat which was intended not as a temple per se but a mausolium for the King Suryavarman II.
We spent a few hours there looking at all the bas-relief on the walls that surround the main temple and learning the Hindu stories that they depict. The carvings took decades to do and did get interupted when buddhism took over as the state religion for a while.
They were eventually finished by a buddhist King who ensured that they remained Hindu stories but the earlier carvings when the temple was first being constructed are the best. I particularly enjoyed the wall depicting heaven and hell. The artists quite graphically illustrate the various punishments received in Hindu’s many levels of Hell.
The stories on the walls were, of course, to educate the illiterate public about their faith and like the Chistrian bible use stories to describe the correct ways to behave. Like fairy tales in from the west they have a moral to them. The stories are really intersting and you don’t need to subscribe to Hinduism to enjoy the stories or appreciate the messages they send. Worth exploring further.
Our second full day we rented bicycles which turned out to be an excellent way to see things. the ground is flat and well paved everywhere so riding is easy and it allows you to stop and explore things quickly. We stopped for monkeys, elephants (real and carved) and more. Since the temple area is park, you are also riding through forest which is very nice.
Both with the guide and by ourselves we also visited Ta Prohm temple. This temple is overgrown with trees and conservationist do not want to remove some of the biggest trees as they are now the only thing holding parts of the temple together. This temple was used in the movie Laura Croft Tomb Raider as a result of its look. It was dedicated to the mother of King of Jayavarman VII who also built a temple for his father. “He was a good son” said our guide.
Most of the temples are being partially restored or have had some work done on them. All the temples are constructed of sandstone which weathers quite easily and no grout was used to join blocks together. Thus the temples were in quite a bad state when a frenchman “discovered” them in the late 1800′s. The French began most of the work in restoring the temples in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. This involved taking piles of rock that had collapsed or fallen over and piecing them back together again. This time grout was added to keep the blocks from sliding off. Since then various efforts and countries have or are currently work on restoring the temples. The work has been interupted several times over the last 100 years because of various conflicts but the French, for obvious reasons, have been the largest contributer to the work. More recentyly the Japanese, Indians, Germans, and even Canada have worked on them. It’s good work as they are brining these temples back from the crumbling piles of rocks that they were before they just disappear forever.
On our last day we had to take a flight in the evening back to Hanoi, Vietnam so that we could make our connection for our flight home the following day. Before we left we met up with my parents who arrived that day for their one week stay in Siem Reap.
I really enjoyed our stay in Siem Reap and would liked to have stayed longer. Alas work beckoned (mostly Mika was beckoned but I was as well).
Our return voyage was mostly uneventful except for our transfer in Bangkok. When we landed to change planes, there wer probably 15 gates free with no planes. I know this because we drove by all of them and then parked on the tarmac. The passengers were loaded onto busses and drive back past the whole airport again to the opposite side of the terminal from where we parked. Then we had to walk the length of the terminal to go through security again. Walk back the length of the terminal a second time only to board busses again 30 minutes later where we had gotten off of the buses earlier. Then we were driven half way down the airport to our plane. I can now tell you from experience walking through it, Bangkok is not a small airport.
So that was our two week trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. Now we start to plan for our return to Canada in July. When in July I don’t know yet. All I know is there is a lot to do between now and then.
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