Siem Reap

Hello again.

For our very first weekend in Cambodia we took a trip across the country to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat.

How did we get there?

Night bus my friends.  Night bus.

We boarded around 11pm and arrived in Siem Reap around 8am on Saturday.  After checking into a hotel, McKae, Natalie, and I went to find food.  We had the best pizza of my life.  It was expensive for Cambodian standards, but my dears, this was the most delicious pizza I've ever had.  It was so good that I didn't even care that it had olives on it.

When we were done with breakfast we went with the directors of CICFO (Botevy and Vanneth), Yaya (Botevy's daughter), Botevy's mom, Chet, Patica, and Li Nah (orphans) to The Cambodian Cultural village.

The Cambodian Cultural Village is like the PCC, just bigger, and hotter, and the people are much shorter, and I don't think it is as fun, but that could be simply because I understood very little of what was going on. 

Something I've noticed- Cambodians can sleep anywhere, anytime.  I didn't really get it until McKae and I unexpectedly crashed on a stage.
I've never been a big napper, but sometimes you're just really tired.

 At the CCV we visited a wax museum, a few culture presentations, and finally we saw their night show.   There was a lot of warriors doing acrobatic fighting.

After the culture presentation- which ended around 9- we went to the Night Market to go souvenir shopping.  4 shirts for $7.50, Huzzah!  After that awesomeness we went to get a fish foot massage.
McKae and Natalie had been looking forward to this all day.  I don't have feet phobias or anything and I don't think I have a deal with people touching my feet, though it really hasn't come up, but I wasn't as psyched about it as the others.  These 'Dr Fish' massage things are everywhere and you can get them for $1-2.  It's a tank of fish, and they eat the dead skin off your feet.  Natalie went first and then McKae coerced me into doing it with her.

Not a fan.


Don't get me wrong, I love Church.  I'll go even further and tell you, quite honestly, that I love 8am Church.  8am came really fast on Sunday morning.  We weren't completely ready, but that's okay.  We took a tuktuk (took-took) to Chruch which was in Khmer.  I'm very grateful that I've spent the last 20 years of my life memorizing church hymns.  It makes singing when you're reading in a different language less of a hassle.  One of the members brought us headsets and the missionaries serving in the ward translated for us.  The Church is very small in Cambodia, but they are hopeful and growing.

McKae and I went with Chet and Pattica to Angkor Wat.

To tell you the truth, I had no idea what Angkor Wat was.  I know, I should have looked at travel blogs and googled 'things to do in Cambodia' before I came, but I was busy, so I didn't.
Looking at it now--
You've seen Disney's The Jungle Book- the ruins where the monkey's live looks like Angkor Wat
You might had seen The King and I- the Kingdom of Siam is much like the ancient Kingdom of Cambodia, if not basically the same thing, it depends on who you talk to.  History is written by the winners.
Everything you think of ancient Thailand, Laos, Burma, and Siam- that's Cambodia.

Angkor is a place where the ancient Cambodians build their temples.  There are/were about 200 temples in Angkor.  The biggest is Angkor Wat.  Every temple has like an entrance house.  We walked up to Angkor Wat and into the 'gate house' if you will and I though well this is a cool building and was about to explore it a bit but Pattica led us on.  Why did we come all this way and not even walk through it?   I looked up after going down the stairs, it's a requirement to look where you're going on Cambodian stairs, and saw this.

Oh silly Aria, you thought the first thing was the Temple.  
 We spent about an hour going around and though it.  Pattica was there for the first time, but he has done extensive study on it.  He was able to tell us everything about ancient Cambodia and Angkor Wat.  You know, it looks like Cambodia hasn't been very good to him, but there is nothing that he loves more than Cambodia.  After walking around we met up with Botevy and Vanneth for lunch and then continued to visit other ruins.

The next ruins we saw were those of Angkor Thom.  This temple is really dilapidated. 
Since we were close, we visited it's neighbor temple which was just recently opened from it's restoration work by the French Government.  This one was especially sacred because it was where the monks would sit and do yoga.  At this temple we were able to go almost to the top, which was super exciting.

Angkor Thom

On our way to the last temple we had planned to visit we saw the remains of walls that were so worn that the structure it once supported is a complete mystery.  It is incredible to think that the trees that have disturbed the structure and intertwined themselves into the brick are new to Angkor.  Trees are old.  These temples are older than trees.  Think about it.

Crazy.

The last temple we visited was Ta Prohm.  It's better known as the 'Tomb Raider Temple'.  This is where the movie Tomb Raider was filmed- Angelina Jolie was in it.  Never seen it, but we've decided that we need to.   The work that has been done, and is being done, to keep this temple standing is wondrous.  There are ropes keeping the god faces together, there are stand supports keeping arches up, but as we left I looked back at Ta Prohm and saw that the tree is there protecting the temple.  Without those trees, the structure would have fallen.








We went back to the hotel and chatted with an American couple that own and run an NGO in a village not far from Phnom Penh.  Very cool people.

We woke up and left for the bus around 7am where we spent the rest of the morning.  McKae and I got to sit up in the front of a double decker bus all the way home.  Cambodia is a beautiful country.  Very flat. Rice fields, swamp lilies, and coconut trees dotting the land.