Our Tale Of The First City: Angkor Wat Wat Wat

We love to go a-wandering

Along Angkor Wat track

And as we go, we love to sing

With our knapsacks on our back

Angkor Wat! Angkor Wat!

Angkor Wat~~!!

Angkor Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat Wat
Angkor Wat! Angkor Wat!

With our knapsacks on our back...

- Song sung from the tune of The Happy Wanderer -

*You know the Valderi Valdera song?

Us, taking the first few steps on the dirt track to the gateway of Angkor Wat - which is semi-obscured by foliage but highlighted by the perfect blue sky in the middle of the picture

Angkor Wat is only one of the vast ancient temples in Siem Reap. But Siem Reap is almost all about Angkor Wat. From pictures that showed Angkor Wat in all her colossal grey stones and sculptures - intricate wall impressions - green woodland rusticity, one almost gets the idea of being in an Indiana Jones movie set.

But in reality, there is no grand adventure when one explores the temple grounds unless you are an avid photographer. One truly enjoys Angkor Wat in all her ancient splendour only if you care to delve deep into her history. So, you either read up big time on Angkor Wat's history before you set out or get a good local guide to fill you in the details and trivials. Getting "templed-out" is a common phrase for tourists who ain't interested enough in history and may get bored exploring temples ruins which all look about the same by the second day there.

Mr. Gecko & I were lucky we got an excellent value-for-money private tour package with our accomodation and even luckier to be guided by a seasoned & patient local guide - so I can tell our tale of the first city well enough through my eyes. Warning first, long entry ahead and it's pretty picture intensive.

Angkor Thom was our very first temple we explored in Siem Reap. Above shows the very magnificent gateway to Angkor Thom which is big and wide enough even for heavy vehicles to pass through

I usually became bored & restless by the 15th minute from the history lesson my guide often conducted due to my short attention span and walked around with the camera in hand.

I love this picture as it shows the perfect connection Mr. Gecko and the guide shared throughout the trip. Mr. Gecko was really interested and cared to listen.

Are you ready to set off now??!!

(Pic shows another shot of the gateway to Angkor Thom with the road fringed by ancient statues)

Stony Stories

Discounting the luscious backdrop of nature elements' colors, the ancient temples are a semblance of boredom with just greyish pieces of stones / statues set upon hard brown mud, very unlike the reddish-goldish gaudiness of Chinese temples. Look closely enough though and the thousands of etchings on the stones and statues tell vast and elaborate stories from the long gone Khmer period which you will never be able to finish even if you have a few days to spare.

It also translates to me the commitment to art quality on such a grand scale and the creativity of past artisans - how their work manage to survive and appreciated today after more than 10 centuries had passed. I posted some stony stories I personally like and thought intersting to share.

I thought the square face statue quite out-of-the ordinary among all the other statues and jestingly commented to Mr. Gecko, "Look, a nerd!" . In truth, the square face is notches above in value in terms of antiquity than the 2 statues behind as cleaner and lighter grey slab of stones meant they are newly constructed to replace those pillaged.

A wall impression of a deity dancing. I like how one can still admire the intricacies despite the layers of lichen and moss covering the wall over the centuries - and give the etching a somewhat soft carpety look.

These 3 stone men is what I meant previously about an artisan's committment & creativity. If you look carefully at their tops, you will notice that all the 3 men wore tops of different patterns!

Hey! You realise they cared about guards depicting individualistic fashion sense even then! And I took this picture of these 3 men from a grand wall of hundreds of such men. *phew~~*

A group of men enjoying a game of cock fight. What arrested my amusement was that the right group of men were ancient Chinese (hair buns on top of their head) and the left group was probably local Khmer themselves (long extended ear lobes). Chinese really go places huh?

We didn't really see much quality ancient statues in Siem Reap. Those good ones were all being looted even at these days as security over at the temples is lax esp. at night. Our guide will tell us, "I saw the statue's face just a few months' ago and now it's gone."

Just like the the picture above, I bet the face was probably sold to some collector. It's saddening but the people there are poor, they have a ready supply of ancient treasures and I guess there are lots of willing buyers.

Board games were probably a pastime reserved for the nobility. Look, I thought the settings were somewhat more fanciful and there were 2 henchmen behind the players. But I may be wrong, they could be just spectators. Hehe...

Need I say more? Looks like it wasn't the Khmers who invented sashimi.

I like this piece of stone slab just for just its realistic family of monkeys playing-dallying on a tree.

Our guide told us the fonts on the wall came from a language known today as Pali. It's a very strange language as there is apparently no verbal sounds to the words, it's just purely for read. Mr. Gecko was puzzled and asked how then is the language being taught since Pali is still passed down to this day and the guide said they just know it.

Well, I was more smart-alecky as usual when our guide asked if we know what kind of langauge it was and I answered straight-out-of-the-mouth "I know, Sanskrit!" Duh...

Now, tis's interesting. It clearly shows a form of torture or death sentence used in ancient Khmer period with a man skewered on a long stick. I took this picture from a very long wall that shows hundreds and hundreds of human torturings taking place in hell.

What's interesting was our guide telling us that during the Cambodia's Pol Pot's regime, the militia actually referred and used similar torture methods found on the very same slabs of stones; and this human skewering was also apparently one of the methods they used to kill and instilled fear.

Hahaha... this is so fascinating that I am using it to close my section of Stony Stories. An even more ancient stegosaurus-like dinosuar in ancient Khmer period? Totally swept us off our feet man when our guide pointed it out to us.

There is only 1 such dino wall carving that our guide showed us and upon further research on the internet when I came back, there is no real claims from experts if the carving is real or a hoax. Talk about things turning up in the most unlikely places huh?

It's quite a common but nevertheless spectacular scene to see huge and broad tree trunks with roots thicker than a python bursting through temple roofs. We felt so tiny standing under the tree.

Woh, I totally dig this picture. Took me lotsa tries to get it only OK as I was on much higher ground. I had to lie almost flat on my stomach to get Mr. Gecko and guide; and the faraway glimspe of Angkor Wat at the end of the dirt track - all in one.

I wanted that Indiana Jones feel, like as if Mr. Gecko and guide were discussing about strategies with the map in hand to break into forbidden grounds. Please excuse my occassional personal achievement claims.

That said, our guide is the only one who bothered to bring a map and explained the vastness and history behind the geographical location of temples dotting Angkor Wat. Dedicated huh?

We were passing through one of the few gateways to Angkor Wat's main compound.

When We Reached Angkor Wat

Unless you are into abseiling, the steps up to the top of Angkor Wat was freakingly scary, for us. Esp. the time when we turned around to face our guide to take photos. The moment we saw how STEEP the ascent was, our bravery plummeted as low as our heart.

You can see from the first pic on the left that we were not climbing, we were crawling up on all fours as the steps were narrow and sandy so one could hardly get a proper grip on hand or foot. The middle pic shows Mr. Gecko gripping me protectively as we turned around for a shot. The last pic? I wished you can see our shaking like jelly legs for the last few steps up.

Really. A mis-slip is definitely fatal.
*I apologise to a few friends who had been been there and whom I had doubted inwardly when they claimed how scary the ascent was. I thought they were just being wussy and all.

But the view that greeted us at the top made it a bit worthwhile. We could see the whole stretch of Angkor Wat surrounded by lush woodland.

Trivia: I must say it was a hazardous ascent and will not recommend to children & the elderly. However, to my utter surprise, I saw ang moh kids as young as ten up there too! I can only say they are daredevil parents, the ang mohs...

It is local belief that if you stand on this same spot we were standing at when the sun shone down, one will get blessed. Tourists waited for their turns to take their pictures here. Our guide was quite shy to take his photos with us and I guessed he didn't want to share our blessings but we would hear nothing of it.

Trivia: Our guide himself comes with a pretty neat personal life story. His father, a prof in the university was murdered during the Pol Pot regime because he was considered an intellectual. For his own safety, his mother told him to escape to Thailand where he became a monk for 10 years. He's now in his early fifties but his comrades call him a lady-killer for his still chiselled good looks with greyish-green eyes.

The Sunrise @ Angkor Wat

We woke up at around 4 am-ish to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat. A good guide will take you to a few vantage points around Angkor Wat to view the rising moment at Angkor Wat's main compound.

Going to Siem Reap and not catching the sunrise or sunset at Angkor Wat is akin to going Hong Kong and not eating the dim sum or going to Phuket and not indulging in body massage - you can considered your trip kinda wasted.

We waited in the dark

Awww~~... Awesome...

Mr. Gecko: I thought you wouldn't be able to wake up in time! But we did it!!!

Tonle Sap @ Siem Reap

Tonle Sap is the biggest freshwater lake in S.E. Asia and located about 2 hours away from Siem Reap's central area. We had a rather bumpy ride as there are no proper roads but mostly mud or stone tracks to get to the remote floating village at Tonle Sap. What I saw when I arrived was a long wide stretch of brown river with lotsa floating homes built closely together on both banks of the river. And the sight was pretty grim.

Most of the families populating the floating village are poor and they live in home conditions much like the boat people in Hong Kong in the early 70s. Some live on big floating sampans while some had grander floating homes built on wide planks with even a kitchen & living room built in. A consolation for us when we passed by floating schools with separated floating facilities (the schools come with separate floating basketball court, how cool!) set up by NGOs from rich countries like Korea and Belgian.

I saw a woman and a little girl in a small and thin sampan trying their darnest to row toward our ferry when our ferry reached the end of the stretch that leads to the boundless sea and we were preparing to turn back. The little girl was paddling furiously to reach us. Their small sampan looked really dangerous and out-of-place in the big open sea - I actually wondered initially if their sampan had problems and they were trying to save themselves and climb onboard our ferry instead. Turned out that the little girl only wanted us to buy her canned soft drinks for US$2 per can. When we declined and gave her some money instead, the mother-daughter pair rowed their small sampan hurriedly to the next tourist ferry. The little girl looked less than 7 years old...

The stretch of brown river with floating homes at both sides

The sampan is a common travel mode for the villagers

A small floating shack and sampan are what some familes have only

Relaxing and gossiping at the kitchen area

A group of resolute child peddlers-beggars. We stopped by a floating souvenir shop for about half an hour and these group of children had never stop their verbal pleas to buy their merchandise even though all the tourists were blatantly ignoring them. They stopped only when most tourists left.

This little girl was the most determined amongst all. She was the last to leave and eventually had Mr. Gecko's US$1. She was trying to sell us bananas but when she received the money, she didn't offer us the bananas but gamely posed for Mr. Gecko when she saw him taking her picture.

These kids are seasoned *a pity*. They know tourists' behaviour.

A good picture Mr. Gecko took of a little girl we passed by who happened to look into our camera lens curiously while lunching on a sampan.

Our room @ HanumanAlaya Boutique Hotel.
We had a very good package deal with everything (3 days private temple tours, guide, driver and temple passes) threw in for only US$370 per person - accomodation for 4 nights inclusive.

Relaxing at the hotel's second level lounge. We even requested and had our lunch there!

Our Last Day @ Siem Reap

We rented bikes for a full day and cycled around the small central / old market area and had lots of thrills while cycling-exploring the central and most of Siem Reap's notable hotels. We had the most fun that day.

One of our many thirst quenching stops on that day

Hotel De La Paix - One of the notable hotels we stopped by to explore (Angelina Jolie stayed there while filming Lara Croft).
We eventually had our brunch there and booked a body massage package with the hotel's spa for the evening.

Their masseuse were really good and gave the rub down with just the right pressure.

Mr. Gecko was content with his rub-rub while I was pleased with my very first pedicure!

We had a mini accident while on our way to the airport. A drunk motorcyclist banged against our car and punctured our tyre. While the driver stopped by the roadside to change the tyre, some small curious onlookers also came by and gawked at the mini drama happening right in front of their makeshift stalls.

Bye Angkor Wat! Hello Ho Chi Minh!!