Wat Phnom

Yaya decided to take me to see some sites around the city before I left.  But we had a time limit because she had night classes at 5:30.  So we did last minute souvenir shopping and looked at the river and then we went to see Wat Phnom.
Wat Phnom-  Phnom is the city...duh.  Wat means temple.  ANGKOR Wat.  Wat PHNOM....there are other WATs... yup.
A long time ago, when I had the kids describe things to me in a presentation, Pattica did his on Wat Phnom.  So I knew a little bit about it, which was fun. Wat Phnom is a Buddhist temple.  So there are Buddhists priests around.  It cost me $1 to get in because I'm not Khmer.   It was really cool to see the decorations and compare them to the ones that you see in Angkor.  Those ones, since they're ruins, are very dilapidated.  A lot of the faces of the dragon balustrades have been stolen by bad people.  I remember when I was in Angkor, wondering what they looked like.  Now I know.  The design wasn't lost, it just wasn't there. 
Since this is a temple, there are sacrifices.  Not in the killing things way, but they buy birds and feed them and set them free, or keep them in the cage and give them to the priests.  I suppose it depends on the type of blessings you want.  But there was this cute little girls sitting selling birds so I took a picture.  There are lots of Apsara designs here as well.  One of my favorite Khmer designs.


At the back of Wat Phnom there is this big clock on the grass and right above it, on the top of the hill, there is this statue.  I couldn't get it all in one picture, so I took a few and then photoshopped them together.

It is supposed to tell a story of some sort. About the ancient kings and the people who served him.  Yup.
And then we get to a funny story. 
So Buddhist monks are like regular monks.  They aren't allowed to get married, they aren't allowed to work for monetary compensation, all that jazz.  But they do have cellphones and stuff like that.  We were on the top of the building taking pictures when this monk comes up to us.  We ask him to take a picture for us and then he insists that Yaya take a picture with him.  He handed me his phone and I took a picture on it, and then he had me take one on my camera.  Yeah.  Weird.  Apparently he asked Yaya for her phone number and was trying to get her to spend time with him. 

Well, not 5 minutes later, after we saw the giant clock, we were in front of the bamboo dragon.  It's the year of the Dragon guys.  The figure is really cool, it looks like it lights up at night.  At least the eyes do.  Well we were there and I took a picture of it and this man is standing there sweeping the cobblestones.  I don't know why, it's not like they're gonna get cleaner.  Well he wanted to take a picture with me.  So we take a picture, Yaya takes it.  And then he looks at the display and decides he doesn't like it.  So he wants to take another one.  He gave me his broom to hold.  I'm pretty creeped out at this point.  But then- oh man- he puts his hand on my hip and his chin on my shoulder.  And that's the face you get in the picture.  Weirdest thing ever.  It's stuff like that where I was glad I didn't speak the language, because that could have been really awkward. 

Well we walked around trying to find monkeys or elephants and didn't find any, so we went back to the store and I bought ice cream to take to the kids.  That was a fun night.  We just sat and ate ice cream and sang together.  I sang to them, they sang to me, we sang together.  Lovely.