Siem Reap and the Temples of Angkor

I've spent over 3 days in Siem Reap now, and even in such limited time I can safely say it has been one of my favorite places of this trip.   Before coming here, I was fully expecting it to be a complete shantytown, comparable to Laos if not worse, with nothing to do aside from venturing 20 minutes outside of town to see the temples.  It has turned out to be quite the opposite.  While it's pretty obvious that there are many poor people here, the touristy part of town, which is basically the whole town, is nice, well kept, and very comfortable.  The people are very kind, more like the Thais than the Vietnamese or the Laotians, the food is decent and cheap (about $2 for a meal, give or take) as is the beer (about $.50), and the place we're staying is great.  We decided to "splurge" and are spending around $12 a night each compared to the $6 or so that we're used to, but it's the equivalent of a 4star boutique hotel in the U.S., complete with a pool, comfortable beds, cable with American channels,  and "free" breakfast which includes eggs, bacon, fruit, cheese, bread, coffee, and tea.  It's pretty reviving to stay in a nicer place for a couple of nights, especially in this Cambodian heat and humidity (36+ Celsius, 95%+ humidity).  There are plenty of great restaurants, cool bars, and one of the first markets we've found this whole trip that has a few non-generic items that may have actually been made in Cambodia.  The town has some charm and just has a great vibe overall.  

It does have a sad side though--specifically, all of the children and people without limbs going around trying to sell stuff. There are kids between the ages of 5-18 everywhere trying to sell everything from snails to postcards to fans to musical instruments.  Many of them are missing limbs (there are also quite a few older people around town missing limbs), presumably from the thousands of displaced landmines in Cambodia (http://www.seasite.niu.edu/khmer/Ledgerwood/Landmines.htm), and most are not in very good spirits.  They haggle you for at least 5 minutes after your initial rejection to whatever they're trying to sell you, following you down the street, telling you to buy it for your girlfriend, for your mom, telling you not to be stingy, etc.  Some of them are pretty funny, and quite clever in their bargaining, but it's still really, really sad--I could never imagine being forced to go out all day selling stuff when I was a kid.  I think we've had quite a few "wow, I'm so fortunate to have been born into middle class America" moments, and really gained some perspective on how good we have it compared to those being brought up in a third world country.  

When we arrived on Thursday, we got a cab to our hotel (the Passaggio), checked in, and then were on the hunt for our California friends from Laos, Linda and Cameron.  We checked their hostel without luck, and decided that the town couldn't possibly be so big that we wouldn't be able to find them.  Sure enough, after 10 minutes of searching we found them [and their friend darrel], and we were pretty excited to be reunited (=lunch and an achor steam).  We used the rest of Wednesday as a get used to the town and explore the markets day, and at night we had two tuk-tuk drivers that Cameron and Linda had befriended take us to the Cambodia part of town for a local experience.  We ended up at a really cool outside (sort of) restaurant/bar, with cheap food, cool decor, and 40 weird looks from local people.  Dinner, shrimp and friend rice, was a $1.25, and beer was $.50...We caught up on our last couple weeks of traveling (they did southern Laos, we did Vietnam), and then called it a night pretty early because we were planning to do sunset at the temples at 5am.  

The next morning we were up at 4:30, and tuk-tuk'd out to the temples (about 6 miles outside of town) with cameron, linda, darrel, and the same tuk tuk drivers we had used the night before [both of the drivers are cool dudes in their 20s that speak great english, like most people here, and we've been fortunate enough to use them for all of our transportation for these few days).  It was pretty surreal riding in a tuk-tuk through neighborhoods and jungles of cambodia during the wee hours of the morning when it was still dark out and people were just starting to wake to begin work for the day...I had a "holy crap I'm in Cambodia" moment...Unfortunately, sunrise itself wasn't all that spectacular because it was overcast, but Angkor Wat itself more than made up for it.  It's the main temple in the giant Angkor temple complex, and it is incredible.  The sheer size of the grounds and the temple is amazing, and the intricate detail carved into every single stone is unreal.  There is a large pond at the entrance, split by a raised stone walkway that leads up to the first gate, which would be impressive all by itself.  After passing the first gate/temple, you enter a GIANT field, with a smaller temple on either side of the main walkway, and Angkor Wat in all of its glory right in front of you.  There's not too much more I can actually describe--it's definitely a see-it-to-believe-it kind of deal. I'll post some pictures that don't do it any justice, but maybe google imaging Angkor Wat would give you some idea of what it's like.  After sunrise, we had breakfast at "Lady Gaga" restaurant (all of the restaurants around Angkor named themselves after something from western pop culture--I believe the restaurant next to us was "Spiderwoman"), which was great, and then went off in the 150 degree heat to explore the other temples. I'm not going to say too much here--we saw three main temples, all of which were absolutely incredible and really made you wonder how the hell people 1000 years ago were able to build such structures.  Each temple had it's own character and uniqueness, and I found that some of the smaller ones were actually more interesting than the massive ones due to the added attention to detail that they seemed to receive.  I was really in complete awe for the entire morning, and thoroughly enjoyed exploring the temples and taking 600 pictures--yes, 600.  And that was just day 1.  We made it to about 1pm before all of us were approaching death by heat exhaustion, so we called it a day and came back to town.  When we got back to Siem Reap, we ate, hung out, ate, explored the town, ate, drank a beer, ate, went to the night market...all we really do in town is eat and chat with locals trying to sell us stuff.  But it's a great time.  

The day before yesterday we slept in (until 7), had an amazing breakfast at our hotel, and kind of took it easy for most of the day, hanging out by the pool and spending way too much time on the internet.  I had an excellent Indian meal that I had been craving-- Pallak Panner and Chicken Marsala, and then at around  230 we headed out to the temples with our tuk-tuk driver to check out a few more main temples and the catch sunset. The two temples we went to were pretty awesome--one was massive but without much detail and very much in ruins; the other was more vertical than horizontal, had much more character than the first, and had a great view of the vast open area that contains all of the temples.  After the temples, we basically repeated the previous night,  hanging out with cameron, linda, and darrel. 

Yesterday, we decided to try sunrise again, hoping for better weather than the first day.  We also went about 30 minutes earlier, around 430am, as 5am seemed about a half hour too late the first time.  When we arrived, we were basically the first people there (there were 4 or 5 others), and it was still so dark that we couldn't see the walkway up to the temple...the host at the front checking tickets just told us to walk straight and don't veer right (there is a giant lake to the right that you would fall into off of the raised walkway, hah).  We were templed out by the end of sunrise, and decided to head back for yet another excellent breakfast at our hotel.  The rest of the day consisted of eating, shopping around, and eating more with cameron and linda.  

Here I am now, at the Siem Reap Int'l Airport, which is brand new and extremely well done, waiting for a flight to Bangkok.  We're only planning to spend a day or so in Bangkok before we head south to the islands (I'm heading to Koh Tao first, google it), which should be the most relaxing part of this trip by far--I'm very much looking forward to it. I did an entirely separate post for pictures just before this because it was easier, so check that out too.  I have quite a few more temple pictures that I'll post sometime in the next few days.  Hope all is well in CA, and that the Lakers keep up the good work (0-3, baby).  Happy mother's day to my awesome mother, Kim, and to all of the other mom's out there!