It's Tomorrow Here: Siem Reap, Cambodia

We could tell when flying into Cambodia that this country was not quite like the others. It was flat, barren and brown and dotted with palm trees. Not a very inviting place from the sky. On arrival, we were picked up by a tuk-tuk, which is essentially two seats on a cart with a roof attached to a scooter, and driven to our guesthouse. Once we arrived we made arrangements to meet our guide the next morning to visit the temples. Our room had an interesting welcome sign:

Many people think that the whole place is called Angkor Wat, but that is only one of the temple complexes. Another interesting fact is that back in the day (like waaay back in the day), Cambodia used to be buddhist and then some kings wiped out all the buddhist relics and devoted the country to hinduism. And, finally, the king Jayavaman VII united the country by combining buddhism and hinduism so people could worship however they pleased.

We met our guide, Tin and driver, Mr. Marom on Sunday morning (March 23) and loaded up for our first stop, Angkor Thom ("The Great City" built by Jayavaman VII in the late 12th century). The outside gate was preceded by a bridge with roughly a hundred demons on one side and a hundred gods on the other, each holding a long sacred snake.

Our first stop inside the wall was the Bayan temple. The iconic images of this temple are the four faces on each of the 54 towers. We were quite taken with them and hopefully our pictures do some justice. The first thing that we looked at in detail was a relief that showed ancient battles.

Next we wandered around the temple in awe of everything.

Next we headed to Ta Keo temple (built by Jayavarman V in the late 10th century). It was a neat temple, but as you'll see throughout this post, we went to so many temples that some of them get lost in our memory. The ones that were really amazing still do stand out, so we guess that's what makes them so great.

Ta Prohm was one that we were really excited to see. It was built by Jayavarman VII in the mid 12th century and now giant trees are growing through, over, under and everywhere in the temple giving it a really natural and junglish appeal. It was originally a buddhist monastery and a very powerful in its time.

Following our walk around Ta Prohm we had lunch and the spent the afternoon visiting Pre Rup, another interesting if not remarkable temple, built by Rajendravarman II in the 10th century:

Next on the agenda was East Mebon, also built by Rajendravarman II in the late 10th century. This one had a couple distinguishing features. It had a dock in the back where worshippers would come by boat to the temple. This was not the case anymore as the water has all dried up now. We were a big fan of the elephants surrounding the temple:

Here's a picture of Michelle and our guide, Tin at East Mebon.

Ta Som and Neak Pean were next. We found Neak Pean to be pretty interesting as it was the ancient healing grounds and fills up with water in the rainy season. It was also built by Jayavarman VII who seemed to be the man back then as he built a lot of temples.

Last temple of the day was Preah Khan which was built by the one and only Jayavarman VII in the late 12th century. He must have been busy! While almost all of the linguas had been pillaged over the years, this temple had the only lingua left in the area. Evan found this building to be more suited to ancient Greece than Cambodia:

This was the end of day one. Evan was ready to see more temples, but Michelle was templed-out and ready for a massage!! We had dinner at the Bayan restaurant and they had a shadow puppet show.

Our guide was smart and had scheduled some non-temple stuff for the morning. We started out at a fishing village about 30 minutes outside of Siem Reap. On our boat out to the floating village we passed a nice upstanding Cambodian family...

The floating village was very, very poor and there were a lot of kids and families begging the tourists for money. This kid was too cute to pass up giving him the equivalent of 25 cents...

The afternoon was spent touring Angkor Wat which was built by Suryavarman II in the early 12th century.

We'll have to do some editing when we get home because we already have 9 hours of video from our trip, but I'm sure you'll all be lining up for the Travelin' Gilberts dvd premiere. Here's Evan capturing some of the awesome reliefs:

As you can see many of the statues are headless as the market for buddha heads is pretty pricey.

Evan befriended a monk for a photo shoot:

We went to Phnom Bakhang for sunset. This temple was built by Yasovarman I in the late 9th century. It was a bit hazy, but overall an enjoyable view. After another long day of temples we went to the market and did some souvenir shopping and had dinner at a fabulous restaurant, Khmer Kitchen. It was delicious!!

Tuesday was our final morning and we decided to make the most of it by waking up at 4:30am and heading out the door at 5am for sunrise at Angkor Thom's Bayan Temple. We were the first people there and it was amazing having the whole place to ourselves (and eerie too with all the shadows). We were alone for an hour until 6:30 when a few other people showed up. Evan did his sunrise video, so he's really excited to put something together for that.

It wasn't a clear morning to begin with, but it got much worse as the skies opened up and it poured on our way to Banteay Srei. Luckily our tuk-tuk had rain flaps, so we didn't get wet, and our driver even had umbrellas for us when we toured the temple. As luck would have it, the rain stopped as soon as we arrived to Banteay Srei, so the umbrellas weren't needed, but the thought was appreciated. This was probably the smallest temple, but the carvings were by far the most intricate. It was built by Rajendravarman in the late 10th century.