Cambodia really isn't that far from Thailand, it took us about 4 hours to get to the border from Bangkok and that was including several half hour breaks for our driver. From the border it's technically only another two and a half hours to Siem Reap, the jumping off point for Angkor Wat. We arrived on Wednesday with enough time to look around at the huge night market and grab some delicious street food. I'm sure Thai people and Cambodians would tell you otherwise but to me all the food I've had in Southeast Asia taste the same. Lucky for me that sameness is very good :)
Thursday we spent the whole day at Angkor Wat. For $7.50 a piece we were able to hire a Tuk Tuk drive us around to all the different temples and sit there and wait for us as we did our exploring. Angkor Wat is huge (I still haven't even seen a quarter of it) so you pretty much have to have a driver to take you around although we did see a few brave souls attempting it on bike.
So...wanna hear the story of Angkor Wat? At least this is my understanding of it from what I learned by watching a National Geographic special--In the early part of the 12th century there was a powerful noble king. One day, his nephew who coveted his power decided to murder him and usurp his throne. As was tradition the nephew was rightful heir to the throne by blood. This wasn't enough for him though, he wanted to prove to his people that he was rightful heir to the throne not just by blood but because the gods willed it. So, he decided to build an entire city of temples to honor the gods, a feat so impossible that only one who had the gods on their side could accomplish it.
It's amazing to see the temples and think how they must have been built. First off, it literally is in the middle of the jungle so thousands and thousands of acres had to be cleared by pure man power alone. Then they had to bring in the stone carved from the mountains about 50 miles to the north. I don't know how much each stone weighed but their size looked to be about the equivalent of the stone blocks used to build the Salt Lake temple. Then they had to actually build the temples and after all that go back and make all the most intricate and detailed carvings I have ever seen by hand. Yeah...Angkor Wat is pretty intense.
Seeing it again for the second time wasn't any less cool or amazing than the first time. It has become a lot more crowded with tourists though and as such they've made a few adjustments--just minor stuff but it made me glad I had also seen it five years ago when everything was more as it had been for the past eight thousand years.
On Wednesday we had received an invitation to go to an orphanage for dinner and watch the orphans perform some traditional Cambodian dances so that's what we did on Thursday night. The kids were all so cute and VERY good dancers. At the end they invited all the foreigners to come up and dance with them to some good ole hip hop music :) So cute! It reminded me of dancing with all my little orphans in Uganda and made me miss them oh so much!!
Friday Ariel and I decided to ride our bikes out to the lake just outside Siem Reap. We had no idea how to get there or how far it was but there were road signs pointing in the general direction so we figured we could just follow those. About 15 km and 2 hours later (we were taking our sweet time) we finally made it. Of course everyone knows getting there is half the fun. Along the way we would greet almost every person we passed, they were all so amused--although I'm not sure if that was because of our poor attempt at speaking Cambodian or the fact that we were trying to ride our bikes to the lake when most tourists just take a tuk tuk. Either way we had fun with it and of course the scenery was amazing!! Cambodia seems less green than Thailand, you still have the miles and miles of rice fields but it just doesn't seem as lush.
Actually getting to the lake was somewhat anti climatic. I mean we got to take a boat and go out and see a floating village which was cool...but not as fun as the bike ride to get there. On our way back we stopped at a small restaurant on the side of the road which had hammocks you could lay in and look over the rice fields as you ate your food. Ariel and I ordered some fruit shakes and kicked back for like an hour just enjoying the scenery.
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