"After about 10 photos, our disposable camera died yesterday afternoon (RIP). We wanted to charge my cell phone to use as a camera before meeting the guide at 7am but it was kept in the bosses room with our passports and money belt for safe keeping so I went to the front desk at 5:30am to get it. Using the phone worked out well and made uploading easy, so today we have some pics.
Disclaimer: Before looking at the pictures, I need to point out that the climate is Cambodia is equivalent to what I imagine it feels like walking in a bowl of soup under a tanning lamp, but because most of the temples are still in use today by the Buddhists we also needed to cover our arms and legs. Basically Amelia and I look like complete and total dorks. Get ready for some high waisted tourists khakis and Jenna, you knew the Norma visor was inevitable.
The first temple we went to was the furthest temple, called the "Women's Temple" because it is considered the most beautiful, made of pink limestone with tiny, complex carvings. The name also comes from the misconception that only women's hands could be small and delicate enough to make such intricate carvings. The style of carvings and images in the temple have a strong Indian influence, even more so than most of the temples in Cambodia. We learned later about the origin of the Indian influence in Cambodia, in religion, language and architecture. In the 3rd century, the Indians were not seafarers (unlike the people of Catan, but that's a different story). The Chinese were though and brought news of India to Cambodia on their way back to China. The Cambodians, who mostly practiced animism at the time, were like sweet, the Indians sound like they have their shit together. So they built their own ships and sailed to India to bring back Hinduism and Buddhism to Cambodia.
The Women's Temple temple is a Hindu temple and many of the carvings we looked at tell the story of Rama, the prince and 7th reincarnation of Vishnu, who's wife Sita got kidnapped by this demon with many heads and many arms and taken to Sri Lanka. Rama quested for 14 years to save her. We also saw intact statues, which we didn't see yesterday. The Women's Temple also had a nice walk through the jungle where we saw some rice paddies, a lotus flower and gecko. The picture of Amelia and I standing outside the pink temple and the statue of the monkey guardians are from this temple.
Because the Women's Temple was so far, we had a long drive there and back. We saw a lot of Cambodia countryside houses which are often built on stilts and elevated to protect from flooding, wild animals and dust. Our guide also told us more about the history of Cambodia and Pol Pot, the leader of the communist party in Cambodia. Pol Pot was not Pol Pot's given name but was adopted during his studies in France where he created the name Pol Pot for himself as a short form of "Political Potential." We also learned about the US bombings in Cambodia. Many Cambodian people lived in the jugle, including Chann (our guide) and hid from the US during the bombings. As a consequence, Chann was born in a termite mound. Literally, his mother gave birth to him inside of a termite mound. This was a common practice at the time.
The next temple we went to was the oldest temple we saw, built in the the 10th century AD. This was another Hindu temple with 8 elephant statues on the platform. The temple used to be surrounded by a huge 4 mile resevoir that has since dried up. The picture of me and Chann on the stairs and the picture of Amelia with the elephant statue is from this temple.
We went to two temples after this that kind of blend together. One we only went to briefly, basically walking in and walking out. It was pretty overgrown, with one doorway framed by a strangler fig, which we attached a picture of. Because these temples were a little more remote, the tourist traffic is less which is nice for taking pictures but bad for the people relying on a tourist economy so the merchants were much more aggressive. At the overgrown temple, there were two girls who ran right up to us counting to 10 in English, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, German, French, Spanish etc. Amelia asked if they knew Polish and they knew Polish too. The next temple was built by the nephew of the king who built Angkor Wat. It was a huge temple with many rooms and doorways. In one narrow corridor there was an old woman blessing people. Chann had just been telling us about the women who chew betel leaves and betel nut because it's natural chewing gum and good for your teeth... but it's actually a mild stimulant (like a chewable caffeine) and carcinogenic, according to Wikipedia. She had a basket of betel leaves and betel nuts so we stopped so he could show us, she also had a calcium paste made from snail shells that can be used as a salve, like to soothe mosquito bites. It was kind of cool and then she blessed me because she just kind of went for it and I felt awkward to pull away. Now I have some cheap yarn on my wrist and maybe good luck?
The last temple we saw before lunch was the water temple, Neak Poan, which was actually an Ayurveda center for healing which its still used for today. There was a moat surrounding the temple and there were four pools surrounding one main pool that made up the temple. Ayurveda is all about the 4 elements, so each pool represented one of the elements and had a corresponding statue: elephant for water, man for earth, lion for fire and horse for air. I thought that was pretty cool. The middle pool represented some geographical body of water in India that is supposed to be mythical and pure etc. There was a statue of a horse in there too and now I'm forgetting the mythology behind that.
On the way to lunch, we drove back through Angkor Thom, which we visited yesterday. Our guide drove slowly so we could take pictures of some of the things we saw yesterday. Like monkeys! Unfortunately they weren't playing in the water anymore, but we caught a couple good shots of some other tourists feeding them. Look at the baby! In the next pic, there's Bayon behind us, which was the first temple we saw yesterday.
We lunched in the same place as yesterday. Not quite as a delicious, and a little more wasp-addled.
After lunch we saw Angkor Wat. Turns out, it's big. And tall. It was really big and it only took 37 years to build (with the help of 300,000 people and 6,000 elephants)! There were 50,000 people that lived in and around it to take care of it. There's a mile-long relief. It also tells the story of Rama, the battle of the Chams, and our favorite myth which is the story of the churning of the sea of milk. With demons one side and gods on the other, they pull on the Naga, who is coiled around a pivot that Vishnu is standing on, on top of a turtle in the sea of milk, which makes the Earth become a thing. The picture of us pulling on the banister is actually us being gods churning the sea of milk (at a different temple). I thought that was really cool. There are lots of apsaras with lots of different hair dos and poses. Then we climbed to the top of that tall thing with the really steep stairs. The stone ones are 75 degrees! But they added some wooden ones on top so tourists would stop dying.
Angkor Wat was discovered like half a dozen times. Not to mention that it's been in continuous use since it was built. Like I saidyesterday, the Portuguese and Spanish thought it was a Roman temple. Also, a Japanese explorer found Angkor Wat and thought he was in India and was like "Sweet I can go home now." It was also discovered by two French dudes. Separately.
Amelia and I were sacks of potatoes by the time we got back to the hotel but we were determined not to nap. After uploading the pictures, we headed down to the pool. Whether our arrival at the pool 5 minutes after 2 cute male Belgian tourists was coincidental is up to the reader to decide. Any good statistician knows that correlation does not imply causation ;) After getting in the pool, Amelia remarked how sweaty her face was. I said mine was too. We dunked our heads a few more times then I actually want to admit trying to wash off the sweat before we realized it was a salt water pool. Oh.
The temperature of the pool was super pleasant, and it was really nice to relax after walking around in the heat all day. We played a silly game where we took turns naming fruits, and then the same with flowers. Surprisingly fun! Round 3 suggestions appreciated. We had to nix scientific names and animals because we knew Ilana would win. Similarly board games for Amelia.
We had ordered traditional Khmer food from the hotel with the required 2 hours notice (a lot of it is stews and curries so you need to do it in advance) so after swimming we ate dinner. Dinner was delicious: mushroom amok and peanut sweet potato curry with banana rice cake. The rice cake was kind of like a sweet tamale with no filling. We wanted to go into town to buy a souvenir for mom and dad and to see the night market. Before leaving the hotel, I saw one of the giant snails we had seen yesterday- shells the size of a fist and the body the size of a flat hand. I picked it up by the shell to scare Amelia. She laughed and asked if I stepped on it. I said no, but apparently gave myself bad karma because not two seconds later my foot hit something slimy and I sent a cane toad flying...it was disgusting for sure but thank god they're only poisonous if you eat them.
We hired a tuk-tuk which is a carriage attached to a motor bike, also known as a deathtrap. We drove about 15 minutes to the night market through Siem Reap, which was a lot of concrete houses next to each other, many with small store fronts, and a few large, flashy whore houses. Most of the streets were not paved, and everybody was sitting or standing outside their store fronts chatting. It was really different than anything I had ever seen before. The night market, unlike the rest of Siem Reap, was pretty touristy. We got what we needed quickly and got back on the tuk-tuk within 15 minutes. He drove us back to the hotel for a total of $6 for the trip there and back.
Update from Amelia: Day 3. Still no mosquito bites.
-Ilana (with help from Amelia)"
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