Cambodia Part 1 : Siem Reap

Apsaras.

I've taken a little break in Thailand to recover from the India thing, recharge my batteries, and of course plan further adventures - I have something coming up soon that is taking rather a lot of planning, stay tuned for updates on that one.  Now though, time for a little bit more of southeast Asia, I was quite taken with Laos a couple of years ago, what will Cambodia be like then?  Easy enough to get to, a 48 Baht train journey from Hua Lamphong station to Aranyaprathet, then a 20 Baht shared tuktuk takes me to the border, straight through Thai passport control, walk across the friendship bridge (donated by Great Britain!) and I'm in Cambodia.  The border town on this side is Poipet, which has a dubious reputation as a den of scammers who will apparently try to sell me a visa or bus ticket at inflated prices.  There is also a substantial zone right on the border filled with casinos - gambling is illegal in both Thailand and Cambodia, but the authorities turn a blind eye here and so it's somewhere for wealthy Thais to come and indulge their vice.  I don't actually have any trouble with touts, in fact I nearly walk straight into Poipet without going through immigration, which seems oddly easy to do, but I manage to spot the office on the other side of the busy road, and after a bit of queueing to show my prepurchased 'evisa', I'm in.  By this time it's dark, and I'm not terribly encouraged to note that Poipet has no working streetlights, making a walk along the busy main road to find an ATM a little less enjoyable than it might be, particularly when I have to cross the road - I am already missing those little footbridges they have in Thailand.  It takes a while, but I eventually get some dollars - somewhat surprisingly, the main currency here, there is the local Riel as well, but it is only used for small change, the rate being 4,000 to the dollar!  On to my hotel, which again is a little odd - a large, but bare and windowless room.  I do at least manage to find a bar cum restaurant, where the beer is very cheap, and while the menu is entirely in Khmer, there are pictures, so I can point to something which turns out to be beef with rice, good enough for me.

Angkor Wat in all its glory.

After a little struggle to check out of my hotel, which initially seems to be devoid of staff, I head off to find a bus to Siem Reap - I think I get lucky there, a sleeper bus is making its way back I assume, and I pay seven dollars to be the only passenger, bargain.  This takes most of the day, so just time to check into another hotel - rather nicer this one, if not ideally situated a mile or so out of town.  A little walk then to find, yes a bar and restaurant, here I can get a beer for a whole seventy five cents.  I am pleased to see that Siem Reap has working streetlights, wonder what else there is to see around here?  Oh yes - the Angkor temple complexes of course.  A mind bogglingly vast area filled with temples of various ages, and in various states of repair, some four hundred square kilometres of them apparently, I invest in a somewhat pricey (sixty two dollars!) three day pass but even with that I'm not going to be able to see everything, will do my best though.  Borrowing a bicycle from my hotel, I spend many hours pedalling about, parking up at various spots to then wander around one complex of buildings or another, beginning with the most famous and best preserved, Angkor Wat itself.  Situated at the centre of a square plot of land, around a mile on a side and surrounded by a broad moat, this is on a scale comparable to anything I saw in India, a huge intricately carved pyramid surrounded by galleries, all built of age blackened stone.  Interesting to compare this to India in fact, as these temples were built to venerate gods which we'd nowadays call Hindu, in the case of Angkor Wat for example, Vishnu.  The story of gods and demons churning the waters by pulling on a giant snake crops up here as well - the moat around the temple representing the water, and the Wat itself the rock around which the snake was wound.  Snake or Naga statues are everywhere too, though most of the carvings are of 'Apsaras', which I see variously translated as 'heavenly nymphs' and 'celestial dancers', they take the form of attractive young ladies wearing few clothes...

The Elephant Terrace.

It does make me wonder if the various huge fortresses I visited in India were built on the flattened ruins of temple complexes like this, I would not be surprised.  Well at least this is all still here, albeit much of it relatively ruined.  A little to the north of Angkor Wat is Angkor Thom, again a square moat, this one more like three miles on the side, and within a bewildering array of temples from different eras.  At the centre, the Bayon temple, again a pyramidal structure, this time surmounted by innumerable stone towers, carved with huge, inscrutably smiling faces, then a walk through the surrounding woods reveals more and more megalithic structures, the Bachuon temple, where stones from the collapsed top of the pyramid were reused in later centuries to create a huge reclining Buddha along one of the walls - which has since, in turn also collapsed.  There's a continual impression that, grand though the remaining temples here are, they were once much more so - every where you look there are piles of cut stone, sections of massive statues sunk into the ground, great piles of masonry where another temple must have stood.  Often attempts at repair or conservation are apparent, but it does tend to look rather like a lego set that has been broken and inexpertly put back together, the carvings on one block not matching up to the next, sometimes a ramshackle assembly of stone that can only be an approximation to the original structure.  But still, a lot survives, I walk past the elephant terrace, with carvings of pachyderms as you'd expect, but also huge gods and demons supporting the walkway.  There's also a 'leper king terrace', the walls covered with an array of carved nymphs and snakes, and still the temples continue, getting older and more ruinous as I head away from the centre, until I reach Prah Palilay, a smallish edifice in comparison to the more famous ones, but fascinating in the way it has been overtaken by the jungle, trees growing out of the stone to create a scene that reminds me of the Ents attacking Isengard in the Lord of the Rings.

I probably could have jumped it.

Is there any other stuff here then?  Sure, it's not really a big town, but there is a market where tourists with annoying facial hair come to buy harem pants... nearby is Pub Street, which does indeed have many pubs, some selling beer for a mere fifty cents.  I'm not quite that poor, I head upstairs in one bar where it's a whole one dollar twenty five (more or less, they can't seem to make up their minds), the reason being that here we get an Apsara show.  Well, I am kind of doing the tourist thing here... it is perfectly wholesome anyway, the heavenly nymphs here seem rather more conservatively dressed than the ones carved on the temples, and there are also some traditional dances not involving Apsaras, such as the charming peacock dance.  Other things - one day I ride south on another ancient bicycle, along the Ton Le Sap river which broadens out into a substantial dock where Chinese tour groups are piling onto boats.  Not me though, I park the bike up and keep walking along the river on what rapidly becomes a dirt track, between the river and some kind of inlet, with many houseboats and many dubious smells.  I get past a guy who says something about my needing a ticket, he has a chap in uniform sat next to him, not sure if this is a scam or just advice to go back and get on a boat.  Next up, the path is broken by a few metres of water, allowing long tail boats from the inlet to access the river... local kids jump over it, but I pay a thousand Riels for them to drag a metal footbridge across for me.  A mile or two further and I reach Ton Le Sap the lake, largest in southeast Asia apparently.  Something to see, although very hot work walking to it, I am almost tempted to swim, but still remember the smells from the houseboat area.  There is also a substantial floating village a little way out on the lake, Vietnamese refugees I believe, that will be where the tour groups are going, there to have people try to sell them scarves I expect.  Oh, and back at the Angkor complex, there are more temples too, would you believe?  I visit Preah Khan, again set within a huge square moat, this must once have been almost as grand as Angkor Wat, now it's a picturesque ruin, patches of well preserved carvings here and there, but mostly tumbled piles of eroded stone, and huge trees growing over the walls, the gnarled, grey roots seeming to form part of the design.  Northeast from here, I reach the East Baray, a huge artificial lake, built as a reservoir and now a strange sight, trees poking up here and there, and of course it has its own temple, Neak Pean, reached via a lengthy boardwalk it turns out to be a sort of water temple, a walled enclosure containing a square pond, with a carved tower at the centre.  Things start to blur a bit, I remember Mebon for its splendid elephant statues, and Ta Prohm, another ruin in the midst of being consumed by the jungle, I gather it was used as the set for one of the Indiana Jones films.  And that is about it, my time here at an end, barring another evening of cheap beer and food.  Have to say this place was pretty awesome, I would come back, but for now there is more of Cambodia to see, off to the capital Phnom Penh tomorrow.

Photos to go with this post can be found here and here.