Angkor Wat

Hello all,

After our tough time at the boarder we stayed a few days in the Town of Siem Reap which was our base camp for visting the temple of Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples as well. Our first day in town we ended up just sleeping in and taking it easy. We needed some rest after our 27 hours of being on the road and sleeping on a night train. In the evening of day 1 we took a trip out to the tallest temple in the region and watched the sunset over the temples and countryside. Cambodia is much flatter then Laos or Thailand, the weather has also been getting hotter. I thinks its a combonation of us moving southwards and we are also getting towards the hot season of the region.

On day 2 we hired a driver/ tourguide for the day and split the cost with an Austrian guy we met at the boarder. So $15 divided by 3 is $5 each for a full day driver and tour guide. Not bad. He picked us up at 5:30 AM and we went to Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise. As with so many other things we have seen and experienced on this trip no words can summarize how amazingly beautiful the temple is. The sheer size, the vast amounts of labor it took, the engineering, and the attention to detail is overwealming. It shows what humans are capable of if they take their love for their religeon and channel it into good and constructive endevours. On day 2 we ended up seeing Angkor Wat, Bayon, and the overgrown temple (forgot its name) that was the setting for the movie Tomb Raider. This was our favorite temple of the day since it mixes the beauty of man and nature. It was a very full day and we all went home exhausted.

Day 3 we arranged to be picked up at 9:00. This gave us a chance to sleep in. Our Austrian friend decided that 1 day of temples was enough for him, so Heather and I set off with our driver. We ended up seeing more of the remote and less visited temples. Some of them also grown over by the forrest. I should also note that all the temples including Angkor Wat have been weathered over time by the elements, and have also been vandalized by the Khmer Rouge. They removed all the heads off the Buhda statues and carvings, and also used some temples for target practice. All cambodian monks were executed by the KR as well. All this in the name of a perfect communist society.

Mixed with the splendor and beauty of Siem Reap and Angkor Wat, we also saw the deep sorrow and despair that still thrives in Cambodia. You can get accustomed to the men and women who have missing legs due to the mines. Seeing the children who are often the victoms is much harder to face. The bamboo constructed orphanages that need to support themselves by selling the childrens artwork, the homeless and the needy is very sureal when juxtaposed with the large Japanese tour groups, and western backpackers. Seeing it day to day becomes very hard. You would have to entirely detatch yourself from all human emotion to not be moved by it all. Heather and I finally broke on our last day near the temples. In our freshly washed western clothes and our personal driver we drove past the local childrens hospital ( the only one in Northern Cambodia) out front waited maybe 100 babies and their nervous mothers waiting to be seen by a doctor. They sometimes wait for 2 days to get in. There is a epedemic of Dengue Fever that is hitting the kids especially hard. The KR executed all the doctors and educated Cambodians in their attempt at a totally eaqual pesant nation. So the hospital totally relies on Foriegn Doctors. Our driver told me that the childern come from very far away, many days journey to be seen. Heather and I finally broke down.

We knew that the journey for us would not always be easy. We have experienced the entire range of human emotion in the last couple months. So far Cambodia has been a very heavy experience for us. We needed a break. Yesterday we took the express bus south and we are now in Shionokville. Its a beach side town with all the luxaries that we need, but at Cambodian prices. We will probably rest here for a week before heading up to Phom Phen for a few, then off to Vietnam.

To end this post on a more positive note I will share our experience of the express bus misadventure. After having been on it for maybe 10 minutes the fan belt broke and the engine overheated. We had to pull over and call for a replacement fan belt to be brought out. After maybe 20 minutes a motor bike pulls up with a new fan belt. Well it was actully only new to us, it was a used fan belt with a large split in it. With no choice but to put it on the driver installed it. He first took his lighter our and tried to melt the split belt back together. He fired the old bus up and within maybe 20 secconds the engine started throwing pieces of rubber around and the belt broke. So after some more phone calls and staring at the engine a man showed up with a piece of rope or cord. It was a thin strong cord like they use on parachutes. One of the locals standing next to me told me that this was not and uncommon repair but usually only for small engines not a large bus. He also told me that this bus was Chineese made and they are always totally crappy. He tries to ride on only Japanese made buses. So they ended up tieing this cord around the pulleys and after sinching it really tight and burning the ends so it wouldnt fray they fired up the engine. It seemed to work OK but it due to the large knot it was off ballance and made alot of noise. The driver rightfully decided this was not a good fix.

So we waited another 20 minutes and a bus pulled up and out jumped the driver with a whole stack of belts. He dropped them on the ground and took off. Fortunately the correct belt was amoungst the tangle. After a few minutes we were off. And luckly for us it made it the whole way down.