Greetings from Angkor Wat!

Friday, 21 December 2007

Departed the lovely Luang Prabang and flew into Siem Reap. The first impression of Siem Reap at the airport was a bit unnerving. Tons of uniformed military type dudes all chuckling to each other as the clueless and (mostly white) Western tourists stumbled around trying to find which line to queue up in. Thanks to the sage advice of Laura's sister-in-law, we had filled out our visa forms for Laos ahead of time and had gotten to the head of the queue when we made it to Luang Prabang and did the same thing here for Cambodia. While our hapless fellow tourists were filling out their forms we proudly walked to the front of the line with our pre-filled in Visa apps --only to be rejected -- somehow these online forms were outdated -- we had to go back and fill in new forms. Great.

Our hotel driver (with a lovely air-conditioned car) was waiting for us and we drove into town. Another couple staying at the same hotel shared the ride with us--a very nice Australian couple that we shared travel stories with. What a culture shock we experienced driving into Siem Reap compared to Luang Prabang! The two places couldn't be more different. Our first impression was DUST -- we had never seen so much dust and dirt kicked up in our life. The driving is the same here as it was in L.P. and even Bangkok -- TOTALLY INSANE. Charles tried shooting some video but we don't think anything short of actually being here could capture the giant free-for-all that makes traveling here a true white knuckle experience. Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. We are slowly getting used to it but we wonder if our driving skills will be forever damaged by the great S.E.A. There are very few traffic lights at intersections, so it's sort of a free-for-all, but somehow they make it work.
Since we got in around 2-ish we decided to do a sunset trek to Angkor Wat. After paying at the front gate the required $40 USD for a 3-day pass we made it to the front of the Wat area with a horde of a million other tourists all doing the exact same thing.

A bit of history about this area, taken from
khmernz.blogspot.com:

Angkor Wat in Khmer meaning “City Temple” was built by King Suryavarman II in the 12th century as a Vishnu temple; in fact, the deity of the eight-armed God is seen today at the entrance, though in the 14th century it became a Buddhist shrine.

The great Khmer empire ruled much of the land in what is now Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, from the 9th through 14th centuries. Constant war with these neighboring countries took its toll and by the 15th century most of this area was abandoned, having been sacked in a great battle with Siam in 1431. A French explorer, Henry Mouhot, rediscovered" the jungle-covered site in 1861, and declared it "grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome.” With Cambodia a "protectorate" of France, French conservation of this area began in 1908, continuing even after Cambodia's independence in 1954. The civil war in the 1970s and the Khmer Rouge's rise to power disrupted any conservation efforts. The KR reportedly defaced many of the statues and monuments here in their ongoing attempt to secure endless misery for their country. In 1992 Angkor became a UNESCO World Heritage site and conservation was re-established. Tourism now accounts for the majority of this area's annual income.
Words can barely describe this place. Let the pictures do the talking here. But we can't even do that because Laura brought the wrong card for the camera. Anyway, suffice to say it's an amazing spot. It would be a bit nicer if less people were here but despite Laura's best efforts to have a little privacy so she could contemplate the awesomeness of the scene the other tourists weren't inclined to do as she asked ("Could you please get the H*ell out of my shot?") What bloody cheek.

After getting back to our hotel and showering we went to this bizarre restaurant we had read about called the "Dead Fish". Luckily our hotel is in a pretty accessible part of town so we could walk there but walking in Siem Reap is a pretty weird experience. There are few real sidewalks, mostly crumbling bits of broken concrete. And cars do not slow down for pedestrians, like we wrote earlier it's one hell of a free-for-all. Hopefully we'll survive with all limbs intact. But getting back to the DEAD FISH. What a cool place. It is a multi-storied building that looks like it used to be a warehouse of some sort. Customers have to CLIMB a wooden ladder to get from one floor to the next. Fortunately the waiters don't carry your food that way -- they actually use a jerry-rigged dumb-waiter type of deal that makes a horribly loud racket but brings up your food and drink just fine. Two bottles of Tiger beer, two glasses of white wine and two dishes for $20 USD -- our most expensive meal yet! We sat with two very nice vacationing Londoners (the tourists we have met from London and Australia so far have proven to be the nicest with Germans coming in second and US nationals a distant third!) Anyway, it was funny hearing these professional women in their early forties talking about not booking anything in advance and just going with whatever guest house they liked in whatever town they ran into. Hopefully we'll find the same luck they encountered when we try the same thing in Vietnam next week.