Day 3 – Wednesday 31st December – Temples

Today is our second day of temple touring. The tours are all very well organised here and the three days that you do that are indicated on all the maps, so if you are traveling independently then you know that at least you are doing the right things and not being led completely astray. There is the Small Tour Circuit which is what we did yesterday, then the Grand Tour Circuit, which is what we are doing today and finally, but not officially there is the extended tour, which is what we will do tomorrow. Although the Small Tour sounds like a subset of the Grand Tour, it actually isn’t and you visit totally different temples on the two days. The Small Tour circuit uses roads that are within the radius of the roads that the Grand Tour uses, hence the names.

Our first temple for the day is Preah Khan, which we got to by going back through Angkor Thom. When we’d gone to Angor Thom yesterday, we didn’t stop at the South Gate entrance, although I’d wanted to because of the statues that line either side of the bridge leading up to the gate. Today, however we stopped so that we could take some photos of the bridge and climb up on top of the wall to get a good view of the bridge which crosses the Siem Reap River.

Today we drove straight through Angor Thom and on to our first temple stop of the day, which is Preah Khan, a long flat temple that is just outside the walls of Angor Thom. Again this temple was in very broken down condition. We did learn one new English word – BECAREFUL! It was on a sign in front of one of the rather dodgy looking doors, that you couldn’t walk through because on the other side of it was a pile of rubble from where the roof had collapsed. Many of these temples that are in a run down condition are being restored, so what is either tumbled down now or being held up by support beams may in a few years time be restored back to something resembling it’s original condition. The walk around Preah Khan was very enjoyable as you can walk through the temple on the way in and then round the outside of it on the way out, so you get a range of perspectives. A sit down some where along the way gives us time to read the guide book and get some idea of who built it, why and when and what it’s main purpose is.

Next stop was Neak Pean. Very small, very different and very cool. You enter along a long pathway to come to an area with a large square pool in the centre of it. On each side of the pool is a smaller pool, that is fed from the main pool. The fountains that feed the smaller pools are housed in little caves and are in the form of an elephant, a lion, a human and a horse. The elephant fountain is shown in the attached photos.

From there it was on to Ta Som, another of the long flat temples. Ta Som is famous for the tree that totally encapsulates the east gate. The gate is big, but the tree around it takes over the whole entrance way and the tower – quite amazing really.

The final temple before lunch was East Mebon. This is another one of the layered vertical ones where you go scrambling up really steep steps to get to the top of the temple. The steps up from the main entrance looked pretty daunting, not so much for going up, but for coming back down especially when you’ve got a back pack with a heavy camera swinging around in it. We were just contemplating heading round to one of the sides to try and find a simpler route when we were latched onto by one of the local unofficial guides. You have to watch out for these, as once they’ve latched onto you, they can be hard to let go and you know what’s coming at the end of the trip. In this instance, we were quite happy to have someone show us the simplest routes to the top of the temple and so paid him a small tip for his help at the end of the tour.

After a late-ish lunch we visited our last temple for the day - Pre-Rup – which was another of the layered vertical variety and although it was larger than East Mebon, we had no trouble scrambling to the top of this one and managed to do so without the ‘assistance’ of a local guide.

For dinner, we took a Tuk Tuk into the night market, which is about 1k down the road and cost $US2 each way. Dinner was still a fairly up market affair at $US27. We’ll be getting cheaper in the days ahead, although we don’t expect to get down to $US3 that we’ve seen in some roadside stalls.

Tuk Tuk’s in Cambodia are little motorbikes (90-125cc) that pull a small carriage that can take up to 4 people. We use them around Siem Reap, but other people use them to do the temple tours and some people even use them to do the extended tours, although that would be a dumb idea because although they are covered, they are also open, so on the dusty roads you’d get pretty messy. We do see some people on them with surgical masks to try and keep the dust out of their nose and mouths. We found the air conditioning in the car did that more than adequately.

The other very popular form of transport around Siem Reap is of course, scooters. Honda has the very inspirationally named “dream” and 125cc monster. Suzuki have taken a slightly different marketing approach, although some would say a more realistic version by naming their 110cc scooter the “smash” – nice. Helmets are not compulsory in Cambodia, although we’ve read that they will become mandatory from next Thursday January 8th. With helmets costing $US18-20 and an average wage of only $US80 per month, it’s a big ask for the population, but apparently they are flying off the shelves.

Beyond that, there isn’t too great a requirement for safety gear on scooters in Cambodia. They are definitely being used as they were designed, with most people riding them in jandals. The most common protective gear appears to be a surgical mask to protect against the fumes. Having said all that, the Cambodians are really slow drivers and riders and are also very good at all merging in together, so although accidents do happen, the level of protective gear is what I would probably wear if I was riding one in this heat. Fortunately for me (and Anne) the government doesn’t allow scooter or motor cycle rentals to foreign tourists in Siem Reap because of the number of crashes and injuries that they receive – my pick would be mostly self inflicted.

As well as being the pulling power for the Tuk Tuks, scooters are used for just about everything else, particularly getting your produce to market and you see people riding around with them laden down with piles of wood, fruit and vegetables and even up to 3 pigs, which I’ll try and get a photo of because they are put into these splint cages and carried on their backs on the back of the motor bike with their feet protruding out either end. Not the most gracious for the poor old pig, but it certainly makes a site for the tourists.

We got a couple of texts at 6pm (midnight NZ Time) wishing us a happy new year. We managed to survive until 9:30pm before crashing into bed. The hotel had a really amazing ice bar and DJs playing and although we did hear the count down and then the amazingly loud fire works and music that went on to 1pm, we were too tired to be bothered getting up to join in the celebrations. All the walking in the humidity and heat and still getting our body clocks into the local rhythm must have taken their toll. It’s either that, or we’re getting old.

Anyway, happy new year to everybody.