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Cold showers at 4:30 in the morning, while not the most luxurious way to wake up, certainly add a spring to your step after you get over the fact that you've just had a cold shower at 4:30 in the morning. Why would I do this? Well, I wanted to see the Angkor Wat at sunrise.
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| The Angkor Wat at Sunrise. |
I was the third person to arrive at what I considered to be an outstanding place to take a silhouette with the sunrise as a backdrop. I even managed to find a chair to sit on while I watched the lights in the sky change, taking a picture every couple of minutes. The beautiful silence of the morning was broken only by the calls of the local animals as they woke, the distant and beautiful chanting of monks and the local businesspeople shouting "Buy some film for your camera?" As soon as the sun started to appear I ran to the back of the Angkor Wat, which faces west, to capture the golden light of the sunrise.
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| As the sun rises, gardeners arrive for work at the Angkor Wat. |
Finding another good spot I started snapping away, pleased that the West side was completely bereft of people (aside from the occasional kid who would stop to try to sell me postcards). That was soon changed by the arrival of a hoard of Cambodian women on bicycles. They all sat down together under a tree, and seemed perfectly willing to sit there all day. I assume they only moved when their manager came because I discovered them later industriously cutting the grass with sickles in one of the outer courtyards.
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| The inner western courtyards of the Angkor Wat. |
Having all the external pictures I wanted, I went in to explore the Angkor Wat. The place was incredible. Enormous towers representing Mt Meru in the centre were surrounded by courtyards and passageways, almost every surface covered with intricate carvings. Outside of this is a large garden surrounded by a rectangular wall 800m wide and over a kilometer long. This is surrounded by a 200m wide moat that was filled with ravenous crocodiles back in the day. I meandered around for well over an hour before heading out to meet up with my driver. We were heading out of the area.
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| A boy fishes for frogs in a pond by the side of the road. |
Life was going on around us in ways that I had never seen before. People were transporting huge bundles of wood or enormous bunches of coconuts by bicycle, boys were fishing for frogs in ponds by the side of the river, people were hiding from the heat beneath their houses, which were built on stilts. It all seems so much simpler than the world I'm used to.
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| Bicycles are the most common form of transport, followed by motorcycles, which are also the most common form of 'taxi'. |
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Of course, you can't go far in the Siem Reap area without seeing a temple or two. And we passed a good few, but I didn't go into any of them. I did get my driver to stop a few times for pictures, but I didn't think I'd see anything that I hadn't already seen. I was sampling, not exploring. I simply didn't have the time to give these temples the attention they deserved.
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| Pre Rup temple, its towers held up by wooden scaffolding, looks like it has seen better days. |
We passed through a fairly large village, with houses made of wood, bamboo and grass of some kind. Almost all of the houses stood on stilts, with animals living underneath. The village spread along the side of the road in two rows of houses for about a kilometer. Behind the houses I could see the rice fields that supports the community.
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| Homes in a village outside of Siem Reap. |
On leaving the village the road took us through the largest rice fields I have ever seen. For more than a kilometer there was nothing but rice, and then we entered sparsely forested jungle, with houses dotting the route on either side of the road. I noticed that at the entrance to almost all of these properties was a scarecrow. When I asked Chhoeum about this, he said that they prevented bad spirits from killing the chickens and pigs.
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| A scarecrow at the gate keeps away the ghosts that would otherwise kill the livestock. |
We stopped for breakfast at Banteay Srei. This temple was small, but incredibly beautiful. Made of pink sandstone, and covered with incredibly beautiful and intricate carvings, the temple is said to have been constructed by women, men being incapable of such delicacy. Coming after the Angkor Wat, I found this temple somewhat underwhelming, especially considering the uncomfortable hour on the back of a motocycle that got me there.
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| Banteay Srei is home to the most beautiful carvings imaginable. It is said that it was built by women as men are unable to produce anything so fine. |
I had deliberately not studied the guidebook before visiting the temples because I wanted to be surprised by everything. The downside to this was that my itinerary was completely in the hands of my driver. He said that we'd go see "the waterfall" and so I said OK. Off we went. 100 meters later the road turned into a dirt track full of potholes and puddles.
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| The road after Banteay Srei. |
It was, however, the best part of the trip. The further we went from Siem Reap, the more interesting the countryside and houses got. I picked a house at random and we stopped to say hi. Chhoeum did a sterling job as a translator, the children seemed excited, curious and shy, the mother seemed amused. I had brought a Polaroid camera with me as an ice-breaker, and it worked perfectly (both producing pictures and breaking the ice).
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| A family examines a Polaroid of themselves at their home near Siem Reap. |
We reached the car park for the waterfall and I headed up the trail by myself. I was expecting a spectacular jungle waterfall. I freely acknowledge that I really should have carried the guidebook with me. I reached the waterfall, and here's what I wrote "...the waterfall was nothing special. It was a nice walk in the forest, a welcome break from the urban, but not really worth the trouble of coming up here." If I had read my guidebook (something I did the next day on the boat to Phnom Penh) I would have been aware that a walk up the river would have shown me some amazing rock carvings.
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| Taking the cow for a walk. |
The way back to Siem Riep was no less interesting than the route out, even though I was exhausted after an early morning start and a day riding rough roads. I noticed a lot of kids doing jobs. I passed groups fishing with wicker baskets, children selling cakes to their neighbours, but most common were the cows being grazed along the side of the road by children of all ages.
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| Vaessna, of Vaessna's ( a fine eating establishment in Siem Reap), smiles while preparing my last spicy soup. |
Back in Siem Reap I sat down for my last meal at Vaessna's wrote my diary and headed to bed early. The next day I was leaving Siem Reap having decided that I wouldn't see anything more without staying for a week. I was now heading for Vietnam, by way of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.