City of Temples

Today we saw one of the modern wonders of the world.

But first, let me introduce some new characters. We have a driver. His name is Heng, he has a wife and a few young kids, and he taught himself English in six months and is currently studying Chinese. He hooked us up with a tour guide, Son, to take us around and give us a grand tour of as many Wats as possible. Son is older, with four kids, he lost a lot of family to the Khmer Rouge, and he's from a small poorer village outside of Siem Reap.

We met up with Heng and Son at 5am to watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat. It was definitely worth a little loss of sleep to see that. The crowds slowly started to disperse as the day brightened and warmed up, so Son took us on a trek around the outside of Angkor Wat and told us all kinds of stories about its construction and use. He also regularly serves as a guide for photographers, so he was constantly stopping and pointing out where I should stop and take a picture and mentioning whether or not we were there at the right time of day for the best light (we usually were not).

(Scott beating his chest in the echo room.)

Son pointed out the library to me, and I immediately looked at Scott who said, "I know, I know, hurry over there and I'll take your picture with it." So I scrambled up the creepy steep steps and inside there was a lone man in white robes. He seemed completely alone in this huge place full of bustling tourists snapping pictures, and that's a lot of how this temple feels. It's overrun with eager tourists wandering in front of every photo op so often it feels intentional, but if you wander around long enough you can find a quiet corner and you feel absolutely alone and peaceful and realize just how massive and majestic this place is. All of the temples have a little library side building, which I was pretty nerdy about consistently, and we of course saw the very long corridor carving depicting the famous story of churning the sea of milk.

After that, we opted to skip the tourist crowds and take a bit of a longer trip off the beaten path to see Banteay Srei, which honestly was my favorite one of the day. It's a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva, but it's also nicknamed the "Citadel of Women." A neighboring tour guide gave me a big flirty grin and said it was because it's small and beautiful like a woman, but no thank you, that's not why. A lot of the carvings depict women, often holding lotus flowers, and there are a lot of yoni around--a female fertility symbol, which, when coupled with the linga and through a holy water ritual helps infertile couples conceive. But it also gets the name because of the beautiful intricate carvings, which they say are simply too fine and detailed to have been done by large male hands. And the carvings are truly amazing and beautiful in the pinkish stone.

Next stop was Ta Prohm, which was another completely unique and beautiful temple. I happen to have a romantic soft spot for ruins, and I love trees, so I found this temple of old mossy stones crumbling slowly in the gently root fingers of these massive 200-year-old trees absolutely breathtaking.

We stopped for lunch at a local restaurant then headed back to our final location. The area is filled with so many temples large and small, so we kept driving by little ones along the way. Apparently more wats continue to be discovered, about one new find a year. I love the idea that hidden in the jungle all around us are these old crumbling ruins getting slowly swallowed up by vines and trees and waiting to be discovered again. We stopped at two baby wats, Temenon and Chuasai Dueda, then went to our final big one, Angkor Thom. This is a huge one with many smaller wats contained within, and even an Elephant Passage, which is a long high platform where the kings and visitors would mount and dismount their elephant escorts. The jewel of Angkor Thom is easily Bayon. It winding confusing stone steps everywhere and narrow corridors, but it's all about the 54 towers decorated with 216 huge smiling faces. At any one time, a dozen or so faces can be seen.

Afterwards, we wanted one final look at Angkor Wat, so we climbed to the top of Phnom Bhagavad and looked down on it all from above. Then we were exhausted, so we went back to the hotel, I took a long and restful bubble bath with my copy of A Storm of Swords, and Scott went out for a 2 hour massage. Then we hit the touristy downtown again and ate at Temple Bar, which had a free live show demonstrating some traditional Apsara dancing. We walked around a bit afterwards and since we were earlier than we had told our tuktuk driver we would be, we stopped at one of the many outdoor Dr. Fish aquariums, where $1 buys you a Coke and 15 minutes with your feet in an aquarium full of fish that nibble the dead skin off your feet. My feet are preeeetty ticklish, much to the amusement of the people working there, and the many tourists strolling by.