Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom

I woke up bright and early this morning - 6:30am and hopped on to my tuk tuk a little past 7am to do some sight seeing. So far, Siem Reap has been the MOST expensive city that I've been in so far. It's $13/eight hour day for a tuk tuk. Meals are roughly what you'd pay in San Jose. The only deals are the massages. *sigh* I had to buy a week long visitors' pass for USD $60 (no joke! it covers all the sites except for two).

Anyways - I have a book that my friend, L recommended. It's called Angkor by Dawn Rooney. It breaks down a list of the most popular ruins and organizes them into groups based on locale. Then it has descriptions and details of all the sights. It's a good thing I picked it up because there are not very many signs posted for any of the ruins that I've been at so far. =) There were a couple of ladies complaining about that at one of the ruins. hehehe...thank you, L!!

First on the list this morning was the famous Angkor Wat. It's one of the most commonly photographed sites in Siem Reap, but I have to admit that it wasn't my favorite. It was rather crowded and seemed pretty sterile. In my head, I had this romantic vision of tumbled rocks in ruin covered with strangler fig vines a la Tomb Raider. No such at Angkor Wat! (Apparently that's at Ta Prohm, where I'm planning on going the day after tomorrow!) There were some really good bas reliefs and the site itself is pretty huge. I just personally didn't get very excited about it. Here's some facts though for your enjoyment about Angkor Wat:

• Angkor Wat is the largest monument of the Angkor group and one of the most intact. It was built in the first half of the 12th century, approximately 1113-1150 AD.
• Wat means temple
• Angkor Wat is a Hindu temple, dedicated to the god Vishnu
• There is considerable debate as to whether or not Angkor Wat was built as a temple or as a tomb due it's orientation to the west as opposed to the east, as other temples. Bas reliefs are arranged for viewing from left to right, a practice used in Hindu religious ceremonies for tombs.
• This is NOT where they filmed Tomb Raider.

After a couple of hours at Angkor Wat, my tuk tuk driver dropped me off at Angkor Thom through the South Gate. My favorite site so far is Angkor Thom. After you go through the South Gate and take photos, my tuk tuk dropped me off at the Bayon temple and then I was on my own for a really interesting 2-3 hours. Angkor Thom has a number of different temples and buildings in the site:

1. Bayon - over 200 large faces carved into 52 towers. One of the more famous sights in Angkor Thom.
2. Baphoun - where someone breaks an ankle almost every day due to a mistep at the bottom of one of the rises
3. Phimeanakas - where you can climb to the top of the ruins (using fairly steep stairs) and see the countryside of Angkor Thom. Going up was steep but not too difficult. It was looking down and walking down the wooden stairs that had me holding my breath! I actually lit a stick of incense at the top of the ruins just to thank the powers that be that I made it safely through it all!
4. Royal Palace
5. Preah Palilay - it was being held up by several large trees and their roots. This is more like what I was expecting to see here! You walk on a path through a light forest to reach the sight. There weren't many other people there - another reason why I liked it. (Although absolutely no people would have been a little spooky, and there were three local teenagers that looked like they wanted to cause some trouble. I dawdled on the path and got behind them and waited around for some other tourists before heading any further...just in case.)
6. Tep Pranam
7. Leper King Terrace - which was just a single statue of the "Leper King". No one really knows for sure who he is, it's just noted that he is unusually naked and posed in a somewhat irregular stance (with one leg knee up - rather than cross legged like many other statues here).
8. Elephants Terrace - very little to see here other than the elephants in bas relief on the lower wall and a statue of a three headed elephant that is in fairly good condition.

I guess I liked the additional vegetation and forest surrounding Angkor Thom. Angkor Wat has a nearby forest, but it's a bit away from the temple itself whereas Angkor Thom is set amidst the forest.

I was pretty tired by the time I met up with my tuk tuk driver at 1:30pm. An eight hour day takes me to 3pm, but I was pretty beat. It's pretty damn hot (in comparison with the other surrounding countries) and still a little humid here in Cambodia. On the way home, I stopped at the McDermott Gallery, where the photographer John McDermott has a number of silver lithograph photos of the various ruins around Siem Reap taken using infrared film. It makes the scenes seem eery and a bit mystical. I picked up a box of cards there and then wandered around the high end shops (there were only 4-5) situated under the 5-star FCC hotel.

By then, it was 2:30pm and I had the tuk tuk driver drop me off in town so that I could have lunch. (I nearly got all 8 hours in for the day!) I have been craving italian food, so I stopped at a restaurant called Trattoria. I saw that they had nice wood fire cooked pizza with a thin crust the way I like it. I got distracted by the saltimbocca of fried veal with cheese and pancetta served with tri-color gnocci. (It was damn good.) But I picked up a pizza for take away to eat for dinner later tonite (sticking with the italian theme today). By the time I left, I had a bill of $18.75USD. For a minute there, I thought I was in Cancun, where it's just as expensive to eat as in the US. Man oh man. Siem Reap is definitely one of the more expensive towns that I've visited so far.

I'm wandering around town now, as my hotel is a bit away from the action across the bridge from the Old Market where all the tourists are. I think that I'll get a foot reflexology massage before me and my pizza head back to the hotel. I ran a couple of other errands on my way here to the internet cafe - burned my pictures to a DVD ($4USD), picked up more shampoo at the drugstore. (Awesome selection of products available there - I'm hand laundering my clothes everynight because I haven't found a cheap laundry service nearby. I'm used to paying about $1 per kilo of laundry vs. by item at the hotel.)

I also booked myself for a nice indulgent facial and spa treatment at one of the nicer spas in town. I'll do a nice 2.5 hours at Bodia Spa for $60 after my last day of touring the ruins, on the 18th. On the 19th, I'm going to help babysit E's nephew when she comes in town with her family so that they can do one day of more adventurous sight seeing. I know I'll be ready by then to take an easy day after 4 days of sight seeing.

Did I mention that you pay everything in USD$ here? One dollar is the equivalent of 4,000 Rial, which is the currency of Cambodia. Anything less than a dollar is given in rial, while everything that is > $1USD is given in US dollars. Strange huh?

That's about it for now - I'm going to see about picking up a couple of souvenirs and a foot reflexology massage before walking back to the hotel for an early night. These 6am wake ups have got me beat! I'm going to try to get a solid 9 hours in tonite (there's not much action in town after 10pm anyways).