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| Author : sue_and_nathan | Diary name : yearaway | ||
| 6 Jun 2001 : Siem Reap - Cambodia | |||
| Mr Rithy | |||
| One of the reasons we came to Cambodia is because I wanted to celebrate my 30th birthday by seeing Angkor Wat. We stayed in Siem Reap, a small place that tourists use a base for seeing the temples. We stayed in a pretty nice hotel called the Angkor Village (http://www.angkor-village.com) At 8am on my birthday we were out with Mr Rithy in his tuk-tuk (it's a bit like a horse and cart with a moped replacing the horse, nothing like the Thai version at all, more like its country cousin) on the road to our first temple. We stopped near the gate of the Bayon where Sue's first surprise awaited me - the king's transport to take us to the Bayon - an elephant. He stopped whenever he saw any nice tasty shoots to chew on so I guess that, like me, he hadn't had his breakfast yet! The Bayon is one of the more famous temples due to the faces carved in the stones at the tops of the sanctuaries. From the causeway it doesn't really look like much, but as you walk up to the third level the faces become so clear - each with their own expression. It's really quite an amazing sight and even more amazing when you consider that it's been there almost 800 years and survived all of the wars here. We walked round a number of other temples in the Angkor Thom complex before lunch. There's really no point in me trying to describe the temples though, it would be lost - they are all works of art and all very different. Some are chock full of amazingly intact bas-reliefs, others have been looted so badly that there's little remaining and others have been left to the jungle and there the trees grow into and on the ruins. We reserved Angkor Wat for after lunch. Lunch was had at a French restaurant in front of Angkor where we had the best wine we've tasted since arriving in Asia. Angkor is by far the most famous of all the temples mainly because it is one of the best preserved. Sue read from the book and guided us around the temple telling me the stories that were contained within the carvings. We climbed to the fourth tier up the steepest steps ever (which the book said should be avoided by those with vertigo!) and watched the sun go down. The day was concluded with a Khmer dinner at the Apsara Theatre listening to traditional music and watching dances depicting the same stories we'd seen on the reliefs today. Sue even managed to pull a chocolate cake out of the hat - candles and all! And that was my 30th Birthday... | |||