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| Golden Banana Boutique Resort |
After a rushed lunch we were off to the airport to fly to Siem Reap, Cambodia. All our flights were on time and everything ran very efficiently. We were impressed. Our last hotel, the Golden Banana Resort Hotel, was the best of a good lot. As with most Southeast Asian hotels, it was open to the elements. The reception area, dining area, and rooms all surrounded the pool. We had a big platform bed and a wonderful shower. We also had a private second floor balcony with hot tub and lounge, also overlooking the pool.
Once again we were in the old part of town. It was dinnertime, so we ate a block away in a place where we were the only Westerners. That isn’t always a good thing for the stomach, and we have occasional problems throughout our trips. But it seldom holds us back. (This time I wasn’t sick until I got home, losing 7 ½ pounds in two days.) After dinner we walked around the night market and along the river which was lighted up nicely.
One goes to Siem Reap because of its proximity to Angkor Wat, and that’s where we went the next day, me in a tuk tuk with our guide and Glenna on a bike. She’d been wanting to do that the whole trip. It worked out well because she stayed on after I went back to get some nice sundown pictures such as the temple reflected in the moat.
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| Angkor Wat from the moat |
Our guide for the day was very knowledgeable according to Glenna who knows a good bit about Hindu and Buddhist mythology, the religions which inspired Angkor. We went to Angkor Wat first, walking first around the outside walls and then going inside. Angkor was built by a 12th c king as a temple to the Hindu god Vishnu and was later used by Buddhists. It is known as having a very harmonious plan and for the wonderful bas reliefs along the outer walls which tell stories from the life of the king as well as Hindu myths and depictions of hell and paradise. The condition of these reliefs was amazing given how old they are and how relatively exposed. Various countries have taken on the task of cleaning or restoring parts of the complex which actually survived fairly well because of the moat around it which kept the jungle back. However, there once were about 1000 Buddhas in the complex; most of the heads were knocked off and sold to museums around the world. Shameful. The Cambodians are very proud of Angkor Wat, even putting it on their flag. You hear so much about Angkor Wat, another World Heritage site, but I have to say I was a wee bit underwhelmed, perhaps because I’ve seen so many wonderful places in India also.
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| View of hell at Angkor Wat |
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| Bas relief of chariot rider at Angkor Wat |
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| King who had Angkor Wat built |
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Temple inside Angkor Wat
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Headless Buddha
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After a lunch nearby we went on to Ta Prohm, another of the temple complexes and one which was the setting for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie. They took care to point that out several times. But it was built as a Buddhist monastery and university in the 12th c. In the 15th c it was abandoned and neglected so that the jungle grew up around it and, in the case of the enormous spung trees, even in it. It is now a very romantic setting and the favorite of many.
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Spung tree growing around temple
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Spung tree taking over at Ta Prohm
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Fixed smile on tower faces
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The third temple complex of the day was the enormous Angkor Thom, built in the late 12th c by another Khmer king in a symmetrical plan and also surrounded by walls and a moat. We only saw a small part of it, the Bayon and the Terraces of the Elephants and Leper King, because I had just had enough walking. The interesting feature of Bayon is that each face of all of the towers has a massive head carved into it, each face exhibiting a fixed smile.
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| Bayon at Angkor Thom |
It’s always fun to learn about customs. Our guide told us an interesting one. Everywhere the Cambodians put their hands together and bow slightly in greeting. Our guide told us that the tips of the fingers are held below the face for peers, to the chin for elders, to the nose for respected people such as teachers, to the eyes for the king or a priest, and to the forehead for a god.
When Glenna got back, we had dinner in the room so we could watch the rebroadcast of the Oscars online. We always have a competition to see who gets the most right. This time I won though it wasn’t really fair since Glenna has been gone for much of the movie year. We agreed on the awards for The Artist.
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| Shaking hands with Glenna |
The next day we took a tuk tuk to Tonle Sap Lake. This lake is the largest in SE Asia and gets much bigger in the monsoon season when the melting snows in the mountains swell the Mekong which meets the Tonle Sap River forcing it to reverse its flow, backing up the waters into the lake. When the waters recede, they leave behind very fertile land, a breeding ground for all kinds of fish.
We were the only passengers on our boat trip on the lake which took us by floating villages that I thought were really interesting, Glenna less so. The houses are on rafts, and every house has a boat to get from one raft to another. There were lots of simple houses, stores, a Catholic church, and both Catholic and Vietnamese schools. We stopped at the store where we were encouraged to buy food and supplies for the poor kids in the school (more to enrich the store owner, we figured, because the prices were crazy) and then went to the school to deliver them. As usual, the kids took to Glenna. Some of them wanted to shake her hand, a common occurrence in our travels.
Catholic Church on Tonle Sap
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When we were passing from one raft to another, Glenna slipped and fell downward, saved only by our boat driver who grabbed her hand and pulled her back up. Another stop was at a crocodile farm (hole in the raft with a net in it as in VietNam) where we were encouraged to give money to feed them. Glenna figured they turned the skins into the purses that were sold in the shop, and we weren’t inclined to support that.
On the way back to Siem Reap, I especially noticed the dwellings, once again very simple, made of bamboo, logs, and leaves. At one point we almost ran out of gas. Our driver was able to get us to the petrol station (see picture). By the way, the Cambodian tuk tuks are the best of the lot, much roomier and more comfortable than in the other countries as well as more open to the breeze. For lunch back in town we had another dish on our list, fish amok, as well as pork with vegetables, and Khmer dumplings, a raw casing with egg, vegetables, or meat inside eaten with a red chili sauce. After some more shopping in the hot, covered markets, we went back to the hotel to get in the pool to cool off.
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| The petrol station |
For dinner we decided we wanted French. We got steak and fries, and Glenna savored every bite. She hadn’t had steak since arriving in India so she was ready. Then we had some good ice cream at another place. At dinner we made our usual lists of bests and worsts of the trip. It’s a good way to think back over the trip and relive it. We both keep daily journals and record these there too. It is really a lot of fun years later to reread the journal; it’s like taking the trip again. I have journals going back to my first European trip in 1970.
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