Day 2: Angkor Thom

First travel update from my sister about our trip to Asia:

"Amelia started her day dark and early at 2am because of the jet lag. I woke up at 4am briefly but otherwise slept pretty soundly until we both started getting ready at 6:50am. We had breakfast at the hotel. I had pancakes (my first delicious real egg real milk non-vegan pancakes in four years!). The pancakes were pretty good and so was our food last night which was also from the hotel. Our guide came to our hotel to pick us up and spoke English pretty well, although he has a bit of an accent. We couldn't get the camera working and my phone wasn't charged when we left so we picked up a disposable camera in town. It was $12 which was definitely a rip off considering a meal costs $3.50 but proverbial beggars can't be a choosers so we got the camera.

The guide drove us to Angkor Wat and the surrounding areas. Angkor means city. We didn't actually go to Angkor Wat today, we're goingtomorrow. We went to Angkor Tom and also saw some other temples that are all in that area. The first place we went was Bayon, which was the last temple of this kind built. Each king had to finish the construction of his temple during his lifetime so each of the temples was built on the scale of 20-40 years rather than the multiple centuries or so that Europe took to complete its cathedrals, even though these temples are huge. The quick construction of the temples was possible because of the much larger population in cities in Cambodia (order of 100,000) than in cities in Europe (order of 10,000)). Most of the temples were built between the 9th and 12th century. There were Buddhists, Hindus and people who practiced animism living in the area at the time.

The religion of the kings kept changing during this period, so the temples reflect the change of power. Bayon was originally a Buddhist temple. The king was also seen as the reincarnation of buddha at the time (like the dali lama) so the faces on the huge pillars were made in his image but also supposed to be the reincarnation of buddha. The temple was later a Hindu temple and the pillars were considered to be the four faces of Brahma. Later power switched back to the hands of the buddhists but not the kind that believed in a reincarnation of buddha as a religious leader so they interpreted the faces on the pillars as the face of the original buddha. The pillars were huge with four faces on each side, there were 8 pillars I think representing the 8 fold path or the 8 reincarnations of the one of the Hindu gods. Again, this is an example of how different decorations in the temple were different symbols depending on which religion was in power. Another example of this which was all over Bayon and some of the other temples we saw was naga, the seven headed serpent. In hinduism, the seven-headed serpent represents the god of water and in the buddhist religon the seven headed serpent protected buddha after a torrential downpour caused the river to flood and almost drowned him, the serpent coiled up and saved him. Outside of Angkor tom there are statues of men pulling on a snake on either side of the bridge, one side is good where all of the men have serene faces and one is evil where all of the faces are frowning. The buddha is often represented sitting on a coiled seven headed snake. In some of the temples there were carving that were originally of buddha but were taken out and in other places there were buddhas with flat crossed legs where the legs were carved over in a more upright position typical of the hindu priests. Many of the buddha statues were taken out and replaced with lingas, which is a phallic symbol in Hindu religion. Basically in a lot of the temples there were tons of these huge statues of penises which used to be statues of buddha. 

In Bayon, there was also a carving depicting the war of the khmer people, who live in Cambodia today, against the Chams who were a people from northern Vietnam. The carvings of the khmer people showed they had really long earlobes, which the guide said is still a common thing people do today. There were other soldiers in the carving of the battle who had goatees and fought alongside the khmers. These were apparently volunteer Chinese soldiers. With the droopy gauged ears and men with goatees, I think a modern day interpretation of the carving could be the Battle of Williamsburg, in which the hipsters defeated the conformists. 

As we were walking to the next temple, the guide pointed out a huge spider, the body was probably the size of my thumb. That's not an exaggeration, as my dad can tell you (when we go diving 2 feet in dad estimation is probably 6 inches in Ilana estimation). I asked him about poisonous animals in the region and he said when he was 6 years old he gotten bitten by a poisonous tarantula. I asked if he went to the hospital and he said that it was during the time of the communist occupation so there were no hospitals. Instead his dad took him to the local shaman, which was apparently a common practice. As we were talking about it, we saw a non-poisonous snake. The guide and I chased after it through the plants and Amelia stayed on the path yelling "Don't you have to worry about landmines?" In the places we're staying, we don't need to worry about landmines. But other places in Cambodia, there are still land mines in the fields and forests. Later in the day, we saw some men who had lost limbs to land mines and made money by playing local instruments and selling cds to tourists. 

Bayon was well kept, but we also saw some other temples completely overgrown by balsa trees which are common in the region. We also saw a strangler fig which was in the process of destroying a balsa tree. Balsa trees grow quickly and produce wood that has a very low density. Strangler figs grow even quicker than balsa trees by being greedy moochers and using other trees as scaffolds to grow up like vines until they have enough sunlight to grow stronger, destroy the inner tree and remain standing like a vines as thick as branches or like a tree with windows if you can imagine. We also saw about 6 monkeys hanging out on top of one of the temples! We saw a lot of monkeys when we were driving to lunch too because the tourists feed them. We didn't feed them though because we didn't get our rabies vaccination. They were also swimming in the river and play fighting (real fighting?) with each other.

At one of the temples we saw, Amelia and I asked a tourist to take a picture of us. While he was taking a picture another tourist who was Asian but not Cambodian took a picture of Amelia and I too. He just kind of leaned in super casually like it wasn't creepy. Which it was. Then when we were leaving he asked his sister (mom? girlfriend?) to take a picture of him with us. I don't know. 

We ate lunch outside Angor Wat in a little restaurant. I had vegetable stir fry with cashews and Amelia had Camodian amok, which is a curry served inside a coconut. Our guide had his lunch brought to him by his wife on a motorcycle which was pretty bad ass.

We saw some more temples after lunch. The second half of the day was way hotter and muggier. Amelia and I were sweating balls by the end and so was our guide. Amelia actually did pretty well with the mosquitos, only making us reapply 100% deet good-for-10-hours bug spray 3 times. There were a lot of mosquitos in the car though and she didn't freak out or let it ruin the day, which I definitely appreciated (family getting this email knows mosquitos are Amelia's arch nemesis).

The last temple we saw required a nice brief hike shaded by trees up a mountain. The hindu king who built the temple believed that being closer to the sky would make his entrance to heaven a little easier. While we were trekking up the mountain, our guide told us that he had lived in the jungle for 10 years. He had also had malaria for 3 years- 3 years!!-  so good thing the pharmacist convinced me to get the pills and I had enough for Amelia. There was one tree he pointed out that's common in the cambodian forest, the seed can be eaten as a savory fruit for cooking, the inside has a cotton like substance for pillows and mattresses, the sap can be turned into jelly and the beetle larvae that live in the tree are also eaten by the local people. At the top of the mountain, there was a Hindu temple. Some of the carvings of women on the sides of the temple had gunshots in them from when the communists occupied Cambodia and used the temple as a fort. A lot of the temples were in the process of being rebuilt, funded by different countries like France, the US, India and China. Some hadn't been taken care for about 100 years. Restoration started in the 1960's but efforts to rebuild some of the temples had also been stopped due to the civil war which ended a little over a decade ago.

Another kind of interesting that I learned was that "Siem Reap" means defeat of the Siamese which is what the city was called after a war with Thailand. Also another interesting fact that I wasn't sure where to put in here was that when the Portugeuse and Spanish first came to Cambodia, they thought the temples were built by the Romans.

After we came back to the hotel Amelia wanted to take a nap. Some guy was outside blowing pesticides on things (maybe?) but it made the sky orange and just looked like a guy with a facemask blowing poisonous gas everywhere. I was a little freaked out because we heard too many stories about communists today but obviously it was fine. We had rice noodle and vegetable stir fry and fried rice for dinner. 

We're going to bed now because we're starting our day at 7am instead of 8am. Good night!"