A picture tells a thousands words, so we could probably put nothing but photos of Angkor on here. Sufficit to say, the temples and ruins at Angkor are truly some of the world’s greatest sights to behold. You see the might of the buildings and then imagine them bejewelled, maybe even carpetted, the paint restored etc. We’re surprised no one has made a "Gladiator" type Hollywood blockbuster to recreate what it must have looked like! Films have been made there of course – you may have heard of "Tomb Raider" and "Two Brothers".
Anyway, we arrived into Siem Reap after a very civilised bus trip from Phnom Penh (not counting the opportunity to snack on sun-dried crickets and cockroaches at the halfway stop). The countryside on the way to Siem Reap was very flat and open, with sparse plantings of palm trees etc. You’d wonder how much of the land has managed to be cleared of landmines. After visiting the museums and reading through the few books we have bought and read on Cambodia’s history, it’s makes you (1) feel very lucky to be able to travel in the first place and (2) meet such wonderful people there who smile so much despite all they and their families have been through.
Siem Reap was hot. Might we inform those who are not aware that is it " low tourist season" in South East Asia because it is the hot season and now approaching rainy season in most countries! And we were lucky! We visited all of the main temples and most of the "2nd tier" temples over a three day period and enjoyed occasional cloud cover and even some rain. When it rained, we just let it rain on us… Chien, our tuk-tuk driver was all trying to get us to wear rain ponchos which we reluctantly wore for about 5 minutes. He thought we were mad; we were in our element…
We were also in our element in the foodie sense. Siem Reap has lots of good food of all origins. We managed to tuck into a variety of local foods, pastas (with blue cheese, heaven! It tasted like we’ve never eaten blue cheese before!), fab little pastries in a place called the Blue Pumpkin. Anyway – temples by day, great food and cocktails/beers by night. By the way, try this one, it’s called the "Tomb Raider": cointrea, lime and soda. Supposedly Angelina threw this together in a place called the Piano Bar when filming said film. It tastes goooood!
Even though it is low season, Siem Reap and the temples were still pretty busy - mostly tour groups from other asian countries. The number of large 4 and 5 star hotels in the town however is staggering and felt odd to see considering the surrounding poverty. We contributed in as many ways as possible to the local economy! This included buying Coca Colas for $1 per can (we know!! "Plus one for your driver lady!!"), cotton "fishermens" trousers, postcards, photographs, cards and all the other bits and bobs that the cute little kids and convincing ladies can sell one!
The children were great craic though, we had fun talking to them. Their english is so fluent. A typical conversation went like this (note, not exclusive to Cambodia):
"Lady, you want to buy my postcaaaaarrd?"
"No, thank you"
"Look, I got lots of postcard, you see, they are good quality"
"No, thank you"
"Why not?"
"I don’t need postcards"
"Why not?"
(Silence, note this is most often taking place whilst walking somewhere)
"Where you from?"
"Ireland"
"The capital is Dublin. What is your name?"
"Sancha/Michelle"
Then, that’s it – you’re scootered. Ten minutes later, you got postcaarrrds….
1 comment:
considering the heat and humidity that day, we are pleased to look somewhat daycent.
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