Gorgeous food and a great nights sleep - we awoke energised and ready to check out Angkor Wat and the other famous temples in the area. As we had mentioned in other posts we were kind of templed out at this stage but you can’t really visit Siem Riep and not do the temple tour!! And to be fair they have quite a few spectacular ones!! We hired a Tuk-Tuk driver for the day and headed to Angkor Thom for our first temple. The most striking feature of this one is the historical stories carved on the walls depicting Khmer & Cham war scenes and daily life of the Khmer people. The carvings are so detailed and cover massive stretches of the walls that surround the temple. It also had huge stone faces on its many towers, some say the faces are representations of the King who built the temple and others say it’s a combination of him and Buddha. All Buddha carvings in the temple are de-faced as a Hindu King took over the temple after the original owner and instructed his people to get rid of all signs of Buddhism!!
After spending the morning at that temple the heavens opened and the wind was blowing a gale!! The tuk-tuk driver tried to bring down the plastic sheeting which was the roof and the sides of the tuk-tuk but we were still getting soaked so we decided to take a break for lunch. Tom had the local Fish Laksa which was amazing and to be honest 4mths on I can‘t remember what I had but I’m sure it was gorgeous!! Fully fuelled up and even though it was still raining we headed for Ta Prohm. This temple is famous for being in the film Tomb Raider with Angeline Jolie. What was amazing about this temple was that it had been left in much the same condition in which it was found. It had trees growing out of the ruins and the jungle surroundings and rain only added to the experience. It was definitely our favourite temple.
We passed a temple that the archaeologists were dismantling and then restoring piece by piece and I must say I have done some large jigsaw puzzles in my time but this must be some major headache!! Then we visited the final temple of the day, Angkor Wat. It was dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. We were expecting to see the famous picture postcard which is on all the guidebooks but as there was a lot of ongoing re-construction with lots of scaffolding to help and a serious lack of water in the pond in front of the temple, Michaela’s best attempt at the famous reflection picture was a little away from the perfect postcard!!
The Picture Perfect Postcard - stolen from google images => the best that I could do!!
It was to hard to believe that The Angkor complex was built in only 300 years. Its massive and the size and detail in the temple buildings is spectacular. In its hey day, Angkor had a population of over 1 million and the Khmer Kings controlled a vast territory extending south, to the Mekong delta in present-day Vietnam, north into Laos, and west over large parts of Thailand.
To top off a great day we went to a show put on by one of the local kids orphanages displaying shadow puppetry & Khmer Aspara dancing. There are a lot of kids begging in Siem Riep and their English and powers of persuasion are unbelievable! The orphanages and other children’s charities in the area plead with tourists not to give money to the children as there are many organisations in the area to help them with housing, food, clothing and most importantly education but because the children can make more money on the street the choice in the short term is easy!
No comments:
Post a Comment