I’m in Saigon and adding new experiences by the minute, and I still haven’t gotten all my photos organized from my three days in Siem Reap. For those of you who count on me to keep you updated on my activities, I’m doing this quick recap of what I did and saw during my last three days in Cambodia.
I’ll replace this with a legitimate, detailed post about Siem Reap and Angkor, but maybe not until I’m back home.
Day Zero (from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap)
It was about an eight-hour drive with stops, one of which was to eat tarantulas. We got a demonstration from a local woman who hunts them, defangs them, and fries them up to sell to neighbors and tourists.
We also stopped to see this 12th-century bridge.
Day One
We started the day with water buffalo cart rides.
Then we took a boat ride on a canal leading to Lake Tonlé Sap. We visited a floating village and had a visit with a midwife there.
That afternoon we visited our first temple of the great city of Angkor. Ta Prohm is famous because it was long ago abandoned, and in the centuries since then it has become overgrown with trees. Also I guess because Tomb Raider, with Angelina Jolie (a movie I never saw) was filmed there.
In the evening a group of us went to the night market and Pub Street, where things were definitely jumping. I was going to get a fish pedicure, but settled for dinner and “fried ice cream.”
Day Two
This was our day to visit Angkor Wat, built in the middle of the 12th century and believed to be the largest religious structure ever built. There’s so much I could say about it, and lots of pictures to share, but I’ll save that for the “real” post. Just a couple of photos here.
After we got back from Angkor Wat and had lunch, I walked over to a very cool pottery workshop.
Later that afternoon, the group went to Angkor Thom. This was the last capital city of the Khmer Empire. There is little left of the city itself other than the temple at its center, Bayon. It was built about 30 years after Angkor Wat was completed. It is famous for its many serene, smiling faces of Brahma, the Hindu creator god. These faces are believed to be modeled on the face of Jayavarman VII, the Khmer king who was responsible for the temple’s construction.
Following our visit there, we went back to Angkor Wat and sat outside to enjoy the view of the temple as the sun began to set.
Day Three
This was our departure day, but there was lots of time before our flight. In the morning, a small group (just four of us) visited Banteay Srei, another temple about an hour away from Siem Reap. This is a much smaller temple than the others we saw, and its nothing to look at from a distance, but the carvings were, for me, the pinnacle of my visit to Cambodia. Though it predates Angkor Wat by 150 years, the detail, the beauty, and the astonishing degree to which they have been preserved just blew me away.
On the way back to Siem Reap, we stopped in a small village to get a demo of how a local woman makes rice noodles.
Back in Siem Reap, we checked out of our hotel and went for lunch, and then we had some time to visit the Angkor National Museum. For me, though the information was interesting and there were some nice pieces of art from various temples of Angkor, it couldn’t help but be anticlimactic.
From there we went to the airport and were soon on our way to Saigon. I’ll try to report from Saigon while I’m still here. But no promises.
Gail Duree
Buffalo cart ride — I remember you said something about not being able to drive an American car in Mexico, but isn’t this a little extreme??
And this is the second opportunity you have had for a fish pedicure, and you still did not do it — what’s the hold up??
Lane
{hangs head in shame}