So many volumes have been written and terabytes of images produced extolling the incredible qualities of Angkor that one might be forgiven for believing no more needs to be done, but this is how I once felt about Brangelina and extra terrestrials and I now know you can just never get enough.
The temples of Angkor are not a World Heritage site and one of the top tourist attractions in the world because of slick polished advertising and no hawkers stand at the park boundary shouting and beckoning you to come in. You don't encounter the hawkers until after you've entered the park and it's only the usual drinks and trinkets they're peddling. No, the temples of Angkor are just simply and inherently awe-inspiring.
The temples are located on the outskirts of the city of Siem Reap which has became well developed with tourist amenities, but is still a very pretty city, the nicest one of the 3 I visited in Cambodia, the other 2 being Phnom Penh and Battambang. The Siem Reap River runs through its center as it makes its way to Tonle Sap Lake and there are nice parks and gardens and tree-lined streets in combination with an overall peaceful and relaxing atmosphere. Even though the temples are a huge tourist attraction, perhaps it's due to their being immense, intricate, mute, and seemingly timeless that calms the attitudes and activities that would normally surround such an attraction.
Even though admittance to the park is expensive by SE Asia standards it's definitely worth it to see these stone monuments, but the aggravating aspect is finding out how the funds are actually distributed. There's a group called the Aspara Authority that's dedicated to the preservation of the temples that receives somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the gate, a private company that administers the admission takes about 17%, and the remainder goes to the Cambodian general fund that is used for the benefit of Cambodian people. I'm reminded of the old joke about Italian actuaries when I say I have a pretty good idea of exactly which Cambodian people largely benefit from the regular charge of money that finds its way to the general fund and those would be Hun Sen and his family and cronies. After all, flying helicopters between mansions spread throughout the nicest parts of Cambodia and keeping your leader living in a style that befits and benefits Cambodia isn't free. This breakdown in Angkor fee disbursements is courtesy of the Lonely Planet guidebook and I'm impressed they were able to obtain these figures and I have no problem believing their veracity and my only doubt is that the portion claimed to go to the Aspara Authority may in fact be inflated.
One of the interesting aspects of the temples is that they are not all versions of the same thing as the general architectural and stone carving styles vary greatly between them. This is due to the long time period and various regimes under which they were constructed. I purchased a 3-day admission to the park and I believe this is the minimum time needed to have a meaningful experience there and see most of what there is to see. Because the temples are so spread out in an area of about 3 x 7 miles, walking is not a viable option, but biking is and since that was my option I'm going to recommend it to anyone who feels up to it. The park itself is about 5 km north of Siem Reap but the road leading there and all the main roads within the park are well maintained and flat so the biking is pretty easy by my standards. Of course I've been a bit of a biking enthusiast and understand not everyone shares my idea of pretty easy, but it's really not bad. You can always try it one day and see how it goes. Renting bikes in Siem Reap is cheap, I never paid more than $1/day, and I found out after renting for 2 days that my lodge offered bikes for free! Granted none of these bikes would last an hour in places like the Bay Area in California without being laughed off the road, but in Cambodia the standards are different and the bikes work just fine. The main reason for biking around the temples is not just to lord a greener than thou attitude over the patrons of motorized transport, but to have the freedom to explore at your own pace and find off-the-beaten-track hidden gems of temples that rarely if ever find themselves part of any motorized tour because they are often down unpaved roads and largely unknown to the tourists themselves. Your tuk tuk driver is not going to voluntarily pull you down one of these unpaved side roads without your coaxing, and yes, that probably also means 'incentivizing' him to do so. I never saw a single tuk tuk or motorbike or car at any of the beautiful peaceful side temples I visited. I encountered a total of 3 other tourists, 1 who was also biking and 2 others who had apparently strayed away on foot from their tour group. The main drawback to biking the temples is having to plan for and locate a suitable place to wait out the roasting hours of 1-3 or even 12-4 PM every day when the tropical sun drives almost all living rational creatures to seek shade. But if you were adventurous enough to be biking in the first place, finding such a suitable place is not at all difficult. Just bring something to read.
Many of the temples are still used for religious purposes and often there's a monk camped out in the central chambers who will be happy to bless you for an appropriate modest fee. On my 3rd and final day touring the temples I engaged the blessing services of not 1, but 2 of these enterprising portals to the benevolence of the gods. Along with a chanted blessing in Khmer or some equally mysterious language the monk will wrap a piece of red string around your wrist as a token of blessedness for all to see and admire and I therefore had bright red strings on each wrist as a consequence of being literally doubly blessed. Little did I know that I would be needing this reinforced spiritual armor against the sinister elements of the universe until later that afternoon and little could I have ever guessed from what quarter it would come.
One of the many interesting aspects to the temples of Angkor park is that sprinkled around the temples throughout the park are small settlements where ordinary Cambodians have huts and small plots of land where they scratch out a living. I imagine many of these intrapark residents also comprise some of the large number of concessionaires that offer cool drinks and alimentations but also serve as somewhat of a gantlet to all visitors of the major and many of the not so major temples. The vendors are almost all women many of them young girls and their lyrical 'cold drink, sir, you buy cold drink, sir' greeted me at almost every temple entrance over the 3 days I spent in the park. They were no strangers to my patronage as I found I needed and wanted copious amounts of cold drinks to keep me pedaling from temple to temple. If you don't want any of the offered cold drinks, the only proper response is a simple firm 'no thank you'. Don't try to play the game of 'well, maybe on the way out' thinking you've just successfully thwarted the sales pitch without bruising any feelings or indicating your true desire of really not wanting anything because the utterance of these words is paramount to striking a binding contract with the vendor and with none other than the ancient stone temples of the Gods, adamantine in their timeless stance for truth and justice, as witnesses.
It was late on the 3rd day and as I parked my bike to walk into one of the last temples I would visit, I was hit with the tiresome and predictable cold drink pitch and maybe it was because I was tired or momentarily unfocused, but I slipped up and said it. 'Maybe on the way out'. 'Ok, ok, I remember you and you remember me', came the trilling enthusiastic response. As I made my way back to my bike after touring yet another breathtaking temple, I remembered my commitment and even though I didn't want yet another cold drink, I told myself if the price was reasonable I would buy one. I've adopted a practice in SE Asia once I'm familiar enough with a place of approaching every business transaction with 3 numbers in mind: the price I think I should fairly pay, the maximum price I will willingly negotiate with, and the walkaway price, that is the price that is so far out of line with the fair price that I just pay it no heed and walk. I decided that I would buy a drink from the young girl as long as she didn't utter that unforgivable third number. It's a common practice among vendors not just here, but everywhere, to regard a tourist more as a head of cattle than anything else and to have a sense of ownership once a contact has been established and therefore to expect to extract a non-competitive price from that tourist. Come to think of it, that practice isn't limited to tourist vendors and don't bother writing your Congressman about it. Anyway, I should have known she would give me the fatal third number and she did. I sighed and told her I just didn't want a drink and mounted by bike and started to pedal away. 'Well that's the way to deal with that!' I chirped to myself as I began laying meters of real estate between myself and the jilted vendor until her words, lacking the usual uplifting singsong quality I had grown accustomed to, rang out dripping with foreboding and malevolence and seemed to echo off the hallowed stone and through the verdant jungle as if bellowed from very the heavens, 'Ooh, you bad man'. I momentarily checked to be sure I was still moving and breathing and not succumbing to the powers of the black curse that had just been laid upon my head and pedaled a little quicker as if that would somehow deliver me out of its reach. I gazed furtively at the trees alongside the road fully expecting them to have adopted a monstrous aspect with branches transformed to menacing hands and claws and I just knew the eyes of the next stone face I encountered would follow me with their stoic judgmental gaze (and they did!) and checked to see that the red blessing strings around each of my wrists had not blackened and seared into my skin marking me forever for all to see and know me as what I had now become: a bad man.
The strings still flashed their brilliant red and hung loosely on my wrists and the trees still swayed gently in the afternoon breeze and I visited 2 more temples without a single 5 ton stone toppling off its 700 year resting place to squash my head like an overripe melon, but I can only attribute this to the fact that I received my Angkor blessings much like the population of Chicago was once rumored to have voted and that is early and often. And I advise you to do the same when you visit the temples of Angkor!
Earlier that 3rd day I had visited the prima donna that is Angkor Wat and it was largely what I expected, that is very large and designed to impress and/or intimidate and crawling with more tourists and concessionaires than I had seen anywhere else in the park. I spent an obligatory few hours there and checked it off my mental list. My favorite temples by far were the ones I found by following unpaved side roads especially on the north side of the park. They were quiet and reverential and beautiful and accessible. To each his own.
One of the pretty riverside streets in Siem Reap.
A tourist balloon is launched early in the morning as seen from Phnom Bakheng.
This site gets really crowded before sunset when throngs come here to watch.
Sunset approaches at Pre Rup and the monks are out in their saffron robes adding a touch of color to the stone.
I stopped at this family's roadside refreshment stand in the East Baray and enjoyed talking to the young man in the blue pants who was the only one who spoke any English. He struck me as the kind of kid who would excel if given the
chance and I hope he gets it, but life is not kind or fair that way.
Maybe my favorite temple, the small and beautiful Krol Koi. No one else was there. Note the tree growing on top of the wall. This is a common and amazing feature in the temples and there are many other larger more dramatic examples of this at other temples including one that was used in the Lara Croft movie.
What a small hand you have! Found this outsized jungle denizen as I was waiting out the roasting hours near the east gate of Angkor Thom.
If you ever wondered what Jayavarman VII looked like. He was the most prolific temple builder at Angkor and his face is everywhere. This is the east gate of Angkor Thom and his face is on all 4 cardinal directions of the gate.
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