July 4 - Bangkok

We know we are really behind on our posts, but we promise that we haven't forgotten! We will be caught up in no time, pictures and all!

We have already described our first few days in Siem Reap, Cambodia so check the post below for June 28 and 29. We'll continue the post with our temple romps from June 30.

Our friends had left that morning so it was just us and Longdy. He picked us up and we rode the tuk tuk back to the temples.

We visited a site known as Neak Pean, a series of five pools that must have looked majectic when they were filled with water. There was one large central pool that fed the four smaller pools via ornatel spouts. Each pool had a different spout, the head of a man, the head of a horse, and two other heads we can't remember now (it's hard to remember every detail, there are so many temples).

Then we visited Bakong, one of the older temples (from the 9th century). It was the first application of what came to be the traditional Khmer style temple-mountain architecture. The size was impressive, with the central tower reaching 15 meters, but the facades of the towers themselves were pretty stark. We Americans might even call them boring.

After stopping for lunch, we went to Beng Melea, one of the most overgrown temples, still largely claimed by the jungle. It was very cool to see the trees growing right out of the corridors and the roots pushing the stone aside. We witnessed the true power of nature and stood in awe.

The last temple that Longdy brought us to that day was his personal favorite, the Terrace of Elephants. This was not in the same temple layout as most of the others that we saw. Instead, it was closer to a wall with a terrace above it. The entire wall stretched 100 meters in length and was about 4 meters high. Most of the entire facade of the wall was covered in apsaras, but there were some equisite life size elephants in relief. Longdy told us he thought the "maidens were beautiful." In all fairness to him, they had bigger boobs and smaller waists than any Cambodian women we saw.

The next day, Longdy took us for a ride through the country, about 1 hour in a tuk tuk outside of Siem Reap. He told us we were going to a good temple, but we had no idea what a treat we were in for. After riding through villages of thatched homes on stilts and rice paddies we finally arrived at Banteay Srey. While it was not the biggest temple we visited, it was definitely one of the most impressive. The entire structure was covered in intricate carvings that were the best preserved carvings we had seen our entire time visiting the temples of Angkor. There were lots of Apsaras, flowers, geometric designs, dragons and demons and the carving was so clear on all of them. Hopefully we will be able to get pictures up soon, because words really don't do the carvings justice.

After that, Longdy drove us back to the main part of the park, and we got to visit a temple that we had tried to on the first day, but the rain had driven us back to Siem Reap early. This temple was Preah Khan, and was a huge muddy mess. It had been used as a monastery in the 12th century and had some of the only round columns found in any of the temples. Archeologists hypothesize that this means they were added to the temple at a later date.

The next day, we hired another tuk tuk to take us to a floating village about a half hour away from Siem Reap. This was a real treat for us, but the poverty we encountered on the way in the surrounding villages was far worse than we had seen anywhere on the trip, thus far. It was also one of the more remote areas that we have visited, since we have sort of been hopping from city to city, tourist attraction to tourist attraction.


The road to the village was not paved, but neither were any of the roads in Siem Reap (except for those leading you from temple to temple in Angkor). We were not surprised that the road got worse the further from town we headed. The tuk tuk pulled over so we could buy tickets for the boat ride through the floating village, so we thought we were close. Boy were we wrong. The village was another fifteen or twenty minutes away, and with every passing inch, the road conditions worsened. It was the bumpiest ride of our lives, and let us remind you that we were in a cart beng pulled by a sub-par motorcycle, with hitch being held on by an oil can that had had its top cut off. Yes, there was half an oil can and a boat hitch holding us to the back of a motorcycle, going on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Luckily, we made it to the pier (well, sort of a pier) safely. When we got down to where all of the tourist boats convene, we were ushered through more mud, and over the few old planks serving as a dock. We had to scamper over several boats because there were many more boats than room for them to ground themselves in the mud.

As we rode out down a creek, we passed boat houses, floating shops, and every ammenity you would expect a town to have - only these ammenities all floated. The high school even had a full basketball court floating next to it. (At least the Cambodians take their sports more seriously than the Vietnamese who only seem to play badminton.) There was a library, a church for the Vietnamese Catholic floaters, fully stocked supermarkets, boat repair shops, and even pig pens bobbing up and down on the surface of the water. There were also lots of homes, of course.


The channel opened into a lake and we rode past river restaurants and more boat houses until we came to the restaurant/boat that was probably offering commission to our boat driver. Beneath the wooden boards we walked on was a slew of crocodiles in one cage and a fish farm teeming with catfish housed in another. They told us they were raising the crocodiles to use their skin to make bags and shoes. We didn't care too much what they did with them as long as they stayed in a cage while we were visiting.


Then it was back on the boat to head back to the mayhem of the "pier." At least we were a little bit better prepared for what the tuk tuk ride was going to be like on our way back to Siem Reap. We got back in the early afternoon, and we were starving. We found a wonderful little Indian restarant just outside the Old Market and gorged for lunch. The food was so good and we ate so much we had so take a nap and sleep off our food comas afterwards.

In the late afternoon we visited Artisans D'Angkor, a nonprofit organization that takes teenagers and trains them in traditional Cambodian handicrafts, which they can sell to tourists. We have seen some other places like this in our travels, but Artisans was by far the nicest and seemed to treat the students very well, and they were in turn producing the best stuff. It was funded largely in part by the European Union, with assistance from private donations. The students at Artisans learned wood carving techniques, silk painting, stone carving and etching, embroidery, and the gift shop had many hand woven scarves which were created at another Artisans location.

That night we headed back into town to soak up a little more of the Cambodian night life before it was time to fly back Bangkok in the morning.

Lots of love,
Ari and Jillian