After the 'swamp' incident, the three of us stared to explore the temple. Angkor Wat is commonly known as the world's largest religious building - it was a Hindu/Buddhist shrine built late in the Khmer Empire's rule by Suryavarman II in the 12th century. Each god-king ruler of the Empire left his mark with a massive temple. It is easily the best preserved Khmer temple, Ankgor Wat is set inside of massive corridor walls in a classical design and consists of a temple mountain. This is a unique structure for the Khmer temples as most don't have the corroded walls with bas reliefs that you find in Hindu South Indian temples. The site is the monument, the symbol and the pride of the Cambodian people. It adorns the currency, the flag and represents the greatest period in the history of this embattled country. It is quite frankly, a stunning architectural masterpiece.Surprised to find no crowds at the temple, we enjoyed its majestic towering pyramids (symbolic of Mt Meru) and massive grounds and spent a good amount of time just relaxing on the ledges high above the ground. The greatest and most unique part of the temple are the bas-reliefs. Surrounding the sides of the temple are massive bas-relief galleries depicting war procession scenes, the Ramayana and Mahabharata and the myth of the Churning of the Sea of Milk. Carved meticulously into the sandstone, these 200m reliefs are simply amazing in their detail and grandeur.
Upon exiting Ankgor Wat, we hopped in Li's tuk-tuk and made our way back through the gates of Ankgor Thom to investigate its wonders. Our first stop was the mysterious 216-headed tower state temple of Bayon. The last state temple built by Empire, it is entirely a Buddhist temple and the many faces that gaze out are thought to be depictions of the god-king himself, Jayavarman VII. Relatively compact and vertical, Bayon is also symbolic of Mt Meru and the surrounding oceans. Just outside of the temple is the Bayon Library - rare that a secular building in Ankgor was built of lasting sandstone rather than perishable materials - with a ridiculously steep staircase that provides great views of Bayon.Needing a snack, we made our way over to the row of restaurants for some shakes. Having been there a day earlier, all of the trinket girls recognized us. We told them we'd buy them some shakes and lunch if they would stop selling us their stuff and hang out with us and let us teach them. So excited to be hanging out with a bunch of adults and get some yummy food, the girls excitedly put down their baskets and sat down with us. The three of us quickly had many girls around us and we were teaching them how to read and write a bit in English and we were just enjoying their company. These girls were really intelligent - the one I was with picked everything up on the first try. It was so enjoyable to see them just acting like little kids. These girls were also so selfless, eagerly sharing all of their food amongst each other and their other friends that popped by. The girls would ride their bikes into Ankgor from their village everyday to sell stuff when they weren't at school. When we were leaving, the girls gave such loving hugs to all of us and then came running up to our tuk-tuk, putting multiple friendship bracelets on all of us.
After lunch we walked through the Terrace of the Leper Kings and Terrace of the Elephants. These grand terraces in the center of Ankgor Thom are good relaxing spots. There is a short trail that runs inside of one of the terraces and is covered with sculptures.
On day three we said good-bye to Hari, don't worry it was only for a week, and set out to see the rest of the Angkor Temples. These temples were located an hour and a half north of Siem Reap (thank you for our dust masks Li). We first set off up the nice and steep 15 minute trail up to Kbal Spean. Running through a rugged forest, you eventually come upon a large stream that is the origin of the Siem Reap River, the water source for the Khmer Empire and the most sacred river to the Khmers as it is symbolic for the sacred river Ganga in India. Lacing this stream are one thousand lingas, the phallic symbol of Lord Shiva, as well as numerous Hindu carvings in the rocks along the stream. This beautifully serene and natural shrine to the Hindu gods also has a 15m waterfall.
The next stop of the day was 40km from Ankgor, the small, but intricately carved sandstone temple of Bantey Srei. Much older than Ankgor Wat, Bantay Srei is also much smaller, but contains the best preserved Hindu sandstone carvings of any of the temples. The ornately carved leaves, Garudas, Nagas, Vishnus, Ramas, Ravanas, cows, Krishnas, etc. are supreme and on par with Khajuraho in terms of sculptural brilliance. With ruined doors, columns and walls strewn about, you can mentally picture the original grandeur of the temple just as you can in a ruined Classical city. There is something equally beautiful about seeing these ruined temples as seeing the ones in pristine conditions. As usual our day was complete with a magnificent sunset over the temples.
After our third day in Siem Reap our time in Cambodia was over and we were off to Lao. We had heard so many great things about Lao that we were very excited to continue on our journey to this new country.(Due to that fact that Hari had already written a brilliant entry about these two days for his own blog, I borrowed some material from him, http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chiapoe/1/1229075520/tpod.html)
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