Siem Reap Ta Prohm

We started day 2 of temple touring at Prasat Kravan, built in 921. This is a tiny temple made of brick, but the inside of the different rooms were filled with gorgeous carvings, something I've never seen done with brick before. 

This carving is of the God Vishnu riding his mount Garuda who is half bird half man. 

More rice harvesting! 

The temple was the highlight of the day, Ta Prohm. Most people recognize this temple, as it was filmed in the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie. The temple is unique as most of the larger trees found here were left untouched, so it looks like nature is taking over the temple. It's interesting to think that all of the temples looked like this when discovered by the French; they just removed all of the trees from the other temples to make them look more authentic. But the trees add a unique dimension to the temple. 

The two most common trees found here are the silk cotton tree and the strangler fig tree. 

Does that giant tree root look like a leg, or is it just me?

Next came Banteay Kdei, built in the 1200's. This temple was nice because it was far less crowded than Ta Prohm. It was quite large and restored very well. 

The front walkways of most of the temples was decorated by a naga, or a many headed snake. There is a fable about Garuda, the half bird half man, and the Naga, but I'll let you look it up!

These are the lovely Apsaras, or celestial nymphs, which the Cambodian dancers imitate. Pretty spot on!

This was a crazy spider that had actually built a tunnel within his web. He was hiding in there, holding his egg sack. I've never seen a tunnel building spider before, but Drew said he saw lots in MI. Perhaps a wolf spider? 

Clearly Drew was the one taking all of the photos today, as all of the pictures are of me, and there are few of him. 

Next was Ta Keo, a large mountain like temple with many tiers, built in the 1000's. 

We wrapped up the day at Thommanon and Chao Say Tevoda, two smaller temples that face each other just outside of the Victory Gate heading into Angkor Thom. These two temples were small but beautiful. 

On this drive back home, we again passed by the children's hospital, and this time there was a line, literally circling the block of mothers with babies waiting to go inside. They were apparently waiting for a free vaccine. But, the wait must have been hours upon hours long. 

We again took a break at a coffee shop to rest and regroup. 

That night we had dinner at a restaurant called Haven, which trains local students for a career in the service industry. Any profits from dinner go towards the school they run. The food was the best we had in Siem Reap! First, a green mango salad. 

Followed by beef lok lak for me. 

And chicken amouk for Drew. 

Since it was our last night in Siem Reap, we went to the circus! It was more of a comedic skit filled with crazy balancing and strength routines. Very fun! 

Siem Reap Bayon Temple

The third day of our trip was spent temple touring. We went to several different places, and I'm sorry to bore you with the names of them all, but I'd like to remember which ones I went to 20 years from now.

We began the day at Bayon, the center temple of Angkor Thom, which is known for its decor of large faces. It was built in the 1200-1300's. Most of these temples were found by the early 1900's by French colonists, who then tried to rebuild them, as most were piles of rubble covered with by nature. Some of the places were restored very well, others, not so well. And sometimes stuff was stolen, in which case they would often times replace it with a recreation of the original. The picture below shows the Churning of the Sea of Milk, with one god's head remade from cement while the one behind is original to some degree.

This is one of the four main gates to the enormous grounds of Angkor Thom. Notice the large faces atop, which point in each major direction. I again had to wear more reserved clothing to be admitted into all of the temples. 

This temple was really fun because its layout was a bit more haphazard than other temples, so you felt like every turn was a surprise. Sort of like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book. 

Next we went to Bapuon, still part of Angkor Thom, built in 1060. This temple had a cool long elevated walkway to the main gate, looking very picturesque surrounded by all of the lush greenery. 

The three pillars in a row were the supports for a covered walkway between the main gate, two libraries, and the main temple. 

The majority of the temples were tiered like this to represent Mount Meera, the center of the Hindu universe. That makes the views great from the top, but also makes the stairs very steep. Notice how steep these ones are? Not a good place for the elderly to visit. Most of the temples you could climb all over with no restrictions, and that was really cool. Every nook and cranny could be explored. 

Most temples were also intricately carved. This was where the background of Hinduism and Buddhism came in handy. Who is that? What does it mean? Understanding all that made the experience much more memorable. I eat that kind of stuff up. It's not for everyone, but I love it. 

It was interesting how much rubble was laying around EVERYWHERE. Clearly when they were rebuilding all of these temples they ended up with extra stones that they couldn't find a home for. Or, someone started a restoration project but stopped, and now no one knows where they came from. 

After a quick stop by Phimeanakas, we then walked along the elephant terrace and the King of the Lepers terrace, which were large open walkways for hosting parties, etc. This is Airavata, a three headed elephant, the mount of Indra the king of the Devas or Hindu demi-gods. Airavata is pulling up lotus flowers. 

After Angkor Thom, we went to Phreak Khan, a large temple built in 1191. This temple was much more symmetric, with square courtyards and a predictable layout. One thing that is very interesting to note is that these temples were used to house Gods, not as a place for people to congregate. As such, they were ornately built, but the spaces weren't that large as opposed to the cathedrals being built in Europe around the same time. Different purposes. Also, while the temples weren't used for people to congregate, most had a large defensive wall surrounding them, and there was always a town living within the walls, as the temple was the capital of whichever king was ruling at the time. Religion and government was very much entwined. Each king just moved over and built a new temple and new capital for himself when he took over. No sharing with the old king allowed. So most of these temples are within a very close proximity. 

As each room would hold a different deity, there were lots of doors and door frames. As such, processions through these temples were probably not common, as those huge thresholds would cause many a priest to trip and fall. Up down, up down...

Many of these temples were completely taken over by nature when discovered by the French, and sometimes nature couldn't be removed without destroying the temple itself. Get a sense of scale by looking at the people in the bottom left corner of this pic. Biggest trees I've seen in a while. 

This was Neak Pean, a temple built in the middle of a pond, on an island in the middle of lake! Small but interesting. 

All around the temples, the land is used for rice farming. It was cloudy and somehow the flat light made the rice stalks seem unbelievably neon green. I've never seen a green that bright before. The picture doesn't do it justice. 

After a quick stop to Ta Som, we went to East Mebon, which was originally built in the middle of a giant lake, the East Baray, which has now gone dry. 

Time to harvest the rice! This has been a really cool part of our travels. As the year progresses, we get to see rice in different stages being grown in different countries. We saw rice in Bali getting planted, new tiny shoots laid in perfectly straight lines. In Guiyang we saw rice being threshed and dried, or separated from the stalks. Here we see the rice actually being harvested. It's amazing how labor intensive growing rice really is. There is both a Cambodian and Chinese proverb that says "You must eat every grain of rice on your plate, as someone sweated a great deal to grow it." Yay for the clean plate club. However, if it's so much work, why not grow an easier (and perhaps more nutritious?) crop? The question of several centuries. With so much standing water around, it's easy to imagine how many mosquitos there were here. I was essentially bathing in bug spray every morning, especially when we passed by the local Children's hospital and saw on the billboard, "Severe Epidemic of Dengue Fever." Bug spray, need more bug spray. 

The last temple of the day was Pre Rup, built in 961, oldest temple we saw that day. This, again was tiered like a mountain, so we had fun clambering all over it. We stayed here for awhile and just sat, taking it all in. I always love daydreaming about what life was like here when the temple and surrounding city were in its prime. 

After a long day of temple touring, we had to take a break. Reading in hammocks drinking sangria and passionfruit smoothies did the trick!