Cambodia

When we arrived at the touristy airport in Siem Reap from Luang Prabang, we were all ready for our next adventure. Because Siem Reap is known for Angkor Wat and its other temples, everything here is very touristy. There are big, and fancy hotels everywhere. We stayed at a place called the Somadevi, it is nice, but a little tacky. The first thing that I noticed was that everyone reminds me of my aunt, Borany, and my cousin Kiki. It makes me miss them so much more then I already do. When our guide, Sam, picked us up from the Siem Reap International Airport, we dropped our stuff at the hotel and then we went to see the famous, the beautiful, Angkor Wat, which is one of the seven manmade wonders of the world. It was the most amazing thing that I had ever seen in my life. When we got out of the van, Sam told us that Angkor Wat with was built with Mount Meru in mind and in three layers: the mote, a wall, and the center temple. Mount Meru (which happens to be a mountain in Tanzania, but is an imaginary mountain to them) is where the Gods live and in order to make it like Mount Meru, they had to build the temple as high as possible. Around the temple there are carvings. Each carving tells a story. The most important one is the Hindu and Buddhist’s story of creation. The story goes that the Gods and the Demons are pulling a snake back and forth like tug-of-war. Doing so, they formed a very holy, milky substance that created humans. This carving is everywhere in all of the temples. We were so happy to have a guide because all of us thought that all of the carvings were beautiful, but they wouldn’t mean anything to us because if we did not have a guide explaining the stories. It was almost 6:00pm when we finally had climbed up all of the steep (and scary) staircases up to the God’s temple. We were planning on staying there for sunset, but the security people kicked us off, so we watched the beautiful sunset from the bottom after we walked down the stairs holding on for our lives (at least I was). When we pulled out of the parking area we were all convinced that Cambodia was going to be an amazing place of learning and discovery for us.

The next day we went to five other temples. The first one of the day was called Ta Prom. This temple is overgrown by jungle. We were told that birds dropped seeds on top of the temple, so there are trees growing out of them. They are big tall trees with amazing roots that sometimes are illusions of people and other things. For instance, there is one tree where it looks like two of the roots are a person climbing up the wall. The temple is such an unbelievable site because of its man made beauty and its natural beauty. It is an incredible site to see with all of the intricate carvings and beautiful greenery.
The next temple was called Ta Koa and it was nick-named “the unfinished temple”. It is called that because some of the carvings are not finished. Some people think that the king died while the temple was being built and the servants left. We climbed up lots of stairs in this temple. Another part of this temple that makes it different from all of the other millions of temples is that part of it was made of wood, and it was struck by lightning, causing the wood to collapse. People from different countries are trying to restore it so there are millions of pieces of ruins from the temples that are laid out just outside of the building. It was very interesting to see this temple because we were able to see the different stages of the carvings. First they draw the outline (we didn’t see this stage but our guide told us this), after that they carve the outline-this looks very plain. The third step is to add the intricate parts of the carving; they do this in sections. It was very fascinating to see. The next temple was called Bantaey Srei. It was one of the more elaborate temples, so professionals think that it was carved by females because females have more patience then males. The carvings are very deep and have many details that obviously took lots of time and patience. To me, it feels very grand and welcoming. This one we didn’t climb up. The next temple that we traveled to was called Bantaey Samm. This one is the farmers and commoners temple. Being so, it is much smaller that the other temples that we had seen. It also not very fancy, but just as beautiful as the other ones and a perfect place for the Buddhist commoners to pray. After a very long day, we had one temple left to see, we were planning on going there for the sunset. It was called Pre Rub. After we climbed to the top of this beautiful, smaller sized temple we sat up on a ledge and waited for the sun to set. As we were sitting up there, Emma, being the little Cal fan the she is, spotted a girl wear a Cal shirt. We met her and her friends and they were all friends from Cal that were traveling together. It was a lot of fun to meat them and the sunset from above the jungle was an incredible sight to see.

For out last day in Siem Reap we went to Angkor Thom, which is a walled in city. Inside the city, there is a temple called Bayon. Bayon is different from the other temples because the carvings here aren’t mythical stories, but real battles that have happened in Cambodian history. I found Bayon to be very welcoming and magnificent. Another temple in Angkor Thom is called Bapoon. We didn’t go into Bapoon because it collapsed and right now the French are restoring it. Not far from Bapoon, there is the old wall that was once the royal palace. The wall is stone, but the rest of the palace was made of wood, so it did not last. Behind where the palace used to be, there is the King’s temple and two pools. The larger pool is for all of the women in the palace to bathe, and the smaller one was for all of the men in the palace to bathe. On our way out of Angkor Thom, we stopped at the Terrace of Elephants, which is exactly as it sounds. It is a platform, or a terrace, with carvings of elephants all around it.

The sandstone that it is made out of is old and uneven, but beautiful. After Angkor Thom we went back to our tacky hotel and we hung out in and around the pool and did some work. After we ate lunch we were off again to go the Floating Village on Tonle Sap lake.

It was very sad to see all of the desperation in this village. It was so poor and many people were missing arms and legs. Their houses are little tiny boats for six people. They are about six square feet. It was so incredibly sad to see this part of Cambodia. That night we went to a performance for dinner. We saw traditional Khmer dancing and had dinner at this place. I am personally not a big fan of ballet, so I didn’t like it all that much, but it was an enjoyable evening.


The next morning, we got on our bus to Phnom Penh. I didn’t like the city that much the first night because it is so in your face. There are always beggars try to get money and it was a little scary to see them. On our second day, we took a tuk-tuk around Phnom Penh to dinner, the grand palace of Cambodia, the internet café, and the market. The way he took us, was through the nice part of town with the nice parks and buildings, so we all got a little bit of a better impression of Phnom Penh. While we were there we spent most of our time swimming and making travel arrangements, but I will not complain. The one part of Phnom Penh that I liked, was that it was not like Siem Reap in the way that it is all dependent on tourists, so we could see a little bit more of the real Cambodia. Phnom Penh had the feel of a big city, in the third poorest country in the world. One thing that I kept thinking about when we were walking around in the city, was how advanced it was before war. Before the war, Phnom Penh was bigger than Bangkok, and it was the biggest and most developed city in Southeast Asia. Without the Khmer Rouge takeover, this capital city would be a thriving capital of Asia, but sadly, it is not.