Angkor What?

So after a day to recover from our border crossing and find the lay of the land, we booked the hotel minibus to take us out to the Angkor archaeology complex.  Turned out it was about the same price to take the nice air con van as it was to take 2 tuk tuks, so we decided to go for sunrise over Angkor Wat and return to the hotel for our free breakfast buffet and then go back to the temples at lunch time to break it up for the kids.

A lot of people have asked me what is Angkor Wat?  It seems it’s not well known so I will fill you in.  Turns out that about 1000 years ago, the Khmers were leading a vast empire which covered a fair bit of Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and of course Cambodia, almost through to Burma.  They were
extremely successful and the capital of the empire was based at Angkor just outside of Siem Reap.  The kings of course had to show how great and successful they were and built huge and grand temples and cities to demonstrate it. 

Angkor Wat is the largest religious building in the world and was built around 900 years ago.  It stands on an island surrounded by a massive moat.  The halls and exterior are covered in carvings of religious significance (hindu & buddhist) and also demonstrate everyday life of
that time as well as illustrations of the great military victories for the empire.

There are a series of other temples in a massive complex (you have to drive around them – some are an hour by tuk tuk), as well as the remains of the capital city – Angkor Thom.

It is pretty impressive and it is what keeps the town of Siem Reap ticking over and it is now crawling with tourists.

So we got ourselves into the minibus at 5am to be in position for sunrise over Angkor Wat at 6am.  When we got to Angkor, obviously it was pitch black and you have to walk over the moat on a causeway, through the main gate house and along another sort of flagstone boulevarde to get to the reflection pond where the best views are to be had.  Luckily I have a torch permanently attached to my bag as there were no lights at all and there were plenty of holes and sunken stones to walk into or trip over. 

Could you imagine such a situation in the west – somebody would’ve sued by now!!  When we retraced our steps on the way out in the light of day, it was quite scary to think of the number of people who had walked over that moat in the dark.  There were masses of people there.

We had made sure to school the kids (and ourselves) the day before on all things Angkor so that it wouldn’t just be a pile of rocks.  The highlight of the morning was still the group of monkeys hanging around the grounds at Angkor Wat.  To their credit though, they were pretty interested in how well the carvings had stood up to the test of time and could this all really be that old?

After lunch, we returned to Ta Prohm, which is the temple that was in the movie Tomb Raider.  Whilst a lot of Angkor Wat has been restored, Ta Prohm is still pretty much in the condition it was found in about 100 years ago ie the jungle moved in and tree roots have destroyed a lot of the stone walls etc.  Ta Prohm is now being restored – I think mainly because it’s almost collapsed, even though it seems most of its tourist appeal is the wild, undiscovered Indiana Jones look about it.

By this stage of the day, it was pretty hot and the kids had definately had enough of what they were now referring to as the piles of rocks lying around!  We saw probably less than 1% of the total complex but we were all satisfied.  Once again, the highlight of the afternoon was a group of monkeys – this time with babies.

When we had returned to the hotel for breakfast earlier; Paul and the kids had surprised me with a birthday cake as it was my 39th birthday.  Paul had asked the hotel staff if they would make a cake and the manager had insisted that he would take care of it and that it would be complimentary.  So we had all the restaurant staff there and the general manager and the hotel manager and all these other guys in suits came out and wished me a happy birthday and asked if I liked the cake etc etc.  It was quite an event!

We could only eat half of the huge cake, so I suggested that we should take it down the alley way next to the hotel and give the rest to the kids who lived in the shanty house.  We had seen about 5 or 6 of them playing there.  They were all very shy when we got there and I’m not sure that they understood what we were doing but one of the women took the cake and smiled, so
hopefully they got some fun out of it.