August 26
We arrived late on the 25th into Siem Reap, Cambodia. With only one full day in the city, we booked a tour with Siem Reap Cycling Tour to see the sights. We had a 4:50am pick up by our tour guide, Young, and we were off to see the iconic view of Angkor Wat at sunrise.
We arrived in time to see – nothing. It was too cloudy to see a sunrise. But that didn’t stop a ton of tourists from pushing and shoving.
Angkor Wat is a temple complex and is the largest religious monument in the world measuring about 402 acres. It was originally a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu but when the Khmer Empire became Buddhist in the 12th century, so did the temple. Cambodia is still 95% Buddhist.
In this carving, apparently an artist tried to change the depiction from Hindu to Buddhist by adding facial hair and a scarf over the left shoulder.
Quick note: Khmer is the language spoken in Cambodia. Khmer is also another name for the country of Cambodia – it is what locals call their country. Kampuchea is also another name for Cambodia – I think it’s the French name. Khmer is the name of the people as well. Khmer is actually pronounced Kh-my. The Khmer Empire, from about 800-1450, extended well into Thailand, Laos, parts of China, and Myanmar. Here’s a map of the empire:
Finding out about the Khmer Empire and Champa (definitely had never heard of that before) was not the only time I felt really uneducated in Cambodia. I apparently know very little about Asian history. I was about to get a history lesson over the next couple of days.
This complex was the capital of the Khmer Empire and translates to “City of Temples”. Although much of the area was deserted by the 17th century, the temple remained active throughout the ages by Buddhist monks while the rivers and lakes nearby helped to keep the jungle at bay (for the most part). There were renovations in the 20th century to remove vegetation from the temples. This work was interrupted by the Cambodian Civil War and the Khmer Rouge control of the country during the 1970s and 1980s. Much more on that to come. Not much damage was done by the Khmer Rouge besides a few bullet holes.
However, a lot of damage was done by art thieves in the 1980s and 1990s from Thailand who cut off nearly every head from every statue and took it back to Thailand to sell. Any statues with heads that you see in our pictures are reconstructions.
Here you can see two statues missing their heads:
And here you can see the outline where a Buddha statue use to be connected to the wall:
Recently a lot of cooperation has been happening between the Cambodian and Thailand governments to get some of the artwork back. However, anything that is returned goes directly into a museum in Phnom Penh to keep it safe.
Here is the main Angkor Wat temple behind us. The building is made mostly of sandstone and is considered “Khmer architecture” which basically just means its architecture is original and anything that looks like it is based off this temple. The towers are shaped like lotus buds and there are a lot of hallways and galleries that housed Buddha statues.
The inner walls of the main building have a series of scenes depicting episodes from Hindu epics. When we walked past them, Young noted that these were myths, but that some of the stone work told actual history of the area.
One interesting fact is that all of the people carved into the walls could be categorized as Thai, Khmer, Chinese, or Champa by their features. Chinese had beards and top knots. Khmer had very long ear lobes.
After getting our fill of the main temple, we grabbed breakfast and then headed off on our adventure.
I was excited to see that we were going to be riding through paths in the jungle. It was definitely a more beautiful ride than driving on the roads.
One of our first stops was this market.
Dragonfruit!
Cambodian diet consists of mainly rice and fish.
Our next stop was the Bayon Temple.
It’s the one with all the heads. It was also starting to get a bit later in the morning, so it became quite overrun with other tourists. Lots of selfies. Lots of posing. Lots of ridiculous outfits so people can become instafamous. Now, I know they were just intimidated because I was looking so good with my helmet hair and super sweaty shirt… it’s hard to compete with the Bronsons when it comes to picture posing.
Here’s Young doing his best impression of the other tourists:
Next some more country side biking:
Young told us: “If you want to see heaven, come to Cambodia”.
Water buffalos! Apparently Cambodians keep buffalo and cattle as savings accounts. They take care of them and raise them until there is a medical emergency and then one is sold off to cover the expenses.
We stopped into this tiny village to learn a bit about their life. Since Angkor Wat became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the locals have actually had a lot of issues. Because of the size of the site, it includes a lot of local farming areas and homes. But rules associated with being recognized as a WHS make it hard or impossible to build new homes, even replacements. It also has made it difficult for them to get electricity and other services, even though utilities are finally able to reach the area because of construction restrictions.
We rode through some rice fields.
And then we stopped into Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm is a temple that has not had many renovations. The jungle has invaded and it makes for completely incredible ruins.
Oh – does this seem a little familiar? It was used as the location for the film Tomb Raider, the original one with Angelina Jolie.
The way that nature has reclaimed this temple is incredible.
Biking was a great way to see the temples. It was about 25 kilometers which was just enough to feel like legit exercise, but since it was so flat, it was fairly easy to do. It was also wonderful to be out in nature again. Plus our guide was great. Young spent a lot of time explaining Cambodian history, but also wanted to make sure he was on top of Western slang. He would often say, “word”, so Michael helped him expand with “word to your mother” and “extra”. I know that “word to your mother” hasn’t been cool in years, but if anyone has doubts, we can all assume “extra” is no longer cool either now that Michael and I have used it.
That night we took it pretty easy. We checked out the night market and grabbed a Khmer meal.
The main Cambodian dish, amok, is curry steam cooked in banana leaves.
Siem Reap was a neat little city, and although we only had one full day here it seemed to get the job done. Tomorrow we’re off down the Mekong River. There is still a lot to come from us on Cambodia.