Mystic Angkor Wat

Another dream came true this week when I visited Angkor Wat... We were lucky enough to be able to visit the temples for 2 full days and 3 quick dashes in between going to the PEPY Ride School and various other Siem Reap escapades. There are over 70 temples spread over about 40km square worth of space, so a week was really not quite enough to cover everything. Although we got to spend a lot more time than most other tourists there, it was really just a quick scrape of the highlights. For a better and more comprehensive version of history, I'd refer you to this or this, or google, rather than having me blab on and not quite doing it justice...

The first day at the Angkor was spent with our fourth grade buddies from the school, which was really quite special for them as well because most of them have never been to the temples themselves, a pilgrimage for many Cambodians. Being there was just senstational. The sheer height and spread of the main temple (Angkor Wat) was just overwhelming. Not mentioning having to descend the Wat via steel ropes! My highlight was definitely at Bayon, at Angkor Thom (Second most popular temple) where I was taken aback by the stone faces which adorned the top of the stupas. The sunlight shifting on the faces make them look as if they were alive, the lips look as if they would begin speaking and telling stories of the people that used to live and die here thousands of years ago. It would be better if there were no one else around, just me and the jungle and the stone faces - just like how Indiana Jones would have liked it. Ta Prom again was just amzing - its referred to as the "jungle temple", a low level (as in height) temple with its bricks shrowded in gigantic vines of tree roots and growth. Apparently most of the temples were in that condition at the beginning of the 20th century, but upon renovation a lot of the jungle growthwas removed. It was decided that they won't remove the growth at Ta Prom because a) its too far gone, it would take too long and too expensive, b) the root systems has in fact supported the structures of the buildings for thousands of years, to remove them it would simply collapse in a heap, and c) it just looks asthetically cool that way!!

The second full day there was probably the best day of my holiday so far - Emma, Patricia and I rode from Siem Reap to the temples and roamed the shaded paths for a day, just chasing the wind and soaking up the chill that the sandstones and the jungle gives you. Highlights include: Monkeys doing monkey business in the middle of the road, learning a silly song from kids at a shrine, finding a great pink lake at sunset, racing the local kids home, and being stuck in a traffic dispute at peak hour.


Emma and I did something rather crazy again on January 2nd, when we turned up to the temples at 5.30am for sunrise. When we arrived it was still the dead of night, shooting stars falling from the sky. We entered the main wat in pitch blackness - aided only with my tiny little kathmandu flash torch. The ground is quite uneven and it was really hard navigating through because you can't see where your feet is landing. We climbed up the Wat, again in pitch blackness - thank goodness i didn't look down. There were drones of bats shreaking in batches, one of them even did a dropping on Emma, who was obviously not impressed. There were staircases and corridor turns every where and we soon lost the 10 or so ppl that we came with. There was however a glimpse of light coming from the shrine to the giant buddha in the middle of the wat, where a few monks were guarding. Beside the giant Buddha there was a row of smaller Buddhas statues in the dim light, headless (thanks to the tombraiders - as in, the real ones) and some adorned in yellow shrowds. It was quite a spooky affair. When one of them started moving I just screamed like a baby. It was in fact one of the security guards just checking that everything is ok... Sunrise however was a bit of an anti-climax after our experience in getting there. We simply chose the wrong spot right beside a renovation construction thingimo. But being there with so many other punters was just fun by itself.

We returned for sunset on the last night before we were leaving Siem Reap, this time at Ta Prip which was a much farther away temple with less tourists. It was what I would call an abandonned castle - with its tall towers and dusty orange appearance in the sunlight, and flex like grass growing in patches on the towers - it looked like an unshaven man. It was a dramatic sunset to be on the top of an endless jungle and the sun disappearing behind the gold rims of the purple clouds. I feel so lucky, so so lucky.