Temples, temples...and more temples!

"Soaring skywards and surrounded by a moat that would make its European Castle counterparts blush, Angkor Wat is one of the most inspired and spectacular monuments ever conceived by the human mind.”

I can't believe that I started this trip 2 months ago, also that it has taken me this long to write this.  I finished my contract at my school on August 31st.  That Friday, September 2nd I flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia.  For those of you who don't have any clue where Cambodia is, don't worry neither did I before moving to Asia so I made this handy map.  This post will talk about numbers 2 and 3, which are Siem Reap and Phnom Penh.  Those are the two cities that I visited in Cambodia.   

My first stop was the ancient city of Angkor. Angkor was the capitol city of the Khmer Empire.  The empire flourished from the 9th to 15th century.  During that time over 1,000 temples were built.  Historians believe that Angkor was the largest pre-industrial city.  It even had a water system in place to help with storing and dispersing water through the whole city.  Then in the 15th century, the city was abandoned.  Historians have many theories as to why the city was abandoned.  There are theories about wars, natural disasters, and with the change of religions the king was losing his power.  After the city was abandoned, the jungle reclaimed the buildings.  It wasn't until the 1900's that Europeans came and started restoring the abandoned buildings.  It is amazing to see how the buildings would have looked when they were built but my favorites were the ones still overtaken by the jungle and the ones that were a tumble of stones.

Here mom, a photo with my face in it! See I was really there.

I spent two days looking at the temples.  I would leave my hostel at 10:00AM and return at 3:00PM both days.  By the third or fourth temple of the day I was dying in the 100 degree heat.  

 The food was amazing!  I wish I could live in a tropical place because I love the fruit so much, unfortunately I cannot stand the heat.  My favorite thing of the whole trip was the coconut shakes.  There were stands all over selling fresh fruit shakes, and they were $1 each.  Once I finished one, I would just buy a new one at the next stand.

Every inch of these temples were covered with carvings.  Imagine how many millions of people have walked over these stones to wear down that flower?

Cambodia cannot afford to pay for the renovations of the temples so other countries sponsor the renovations.  It is interesting to see how the renovations are like giant puzzles.  The bricks are numbered and just put back together.

While historians know which kings built some of the temples they are not quite sure if the temples are in honor of gods or the kings themselves.

You see those black spots on the photo on the right? Those are some friendly bats hanging from the ceiling.

There are many parts of statues throughout the temples.  The temples have been looted so many times it is hard to know where anything was originally.  Cambodia is in constant battle with the French government, museums, and auction houses to reclaim artifacts that have been stolen from the Angkor temples.

At this temple I had a man ask me if I had seen the elephant carvings.  I said no, thinking he would point me in the direction.  Nope, instead he took me on a tour pointing out good photo opportunities.  Once we got to the elephant carving, he then asked me for money.  I only had about 50 cents worth of Cambodian money or $5 on me.  I definitely wasn't going to give him $5, I apologized really quick saying I didn't have money and ran away quickly.  After that anytime anyone asked me anything I said no thank you and ran away.

The picture on the right shows my driver!  The hostels each have tuk tuk drivers that they employ.  A tuk Tuk is a motorcycle with a sort of carriage hooked to it.  This guy would pick me up in the morning, take me to the first temple, then wait for me until I was done.  Then he would take me to the next.  For the whole day, it was $15 to have him do this.

I loved some of the ingenuity of fixing the temples.

It was very strange to see the feet of statues everywhere.  Again these statues were stolen at some point.

This temple was my favorite.  The layout of the temple had survived but all of the roofs had caved in leaving what seemed to be courtyards full of huge blocks.

This temple was also very cool.  You had to walk across this long wooden bridge, across a lake.  The temple was built in the middle of a pond on the small island.

I thought it was strange that there would be a whole intact dog statue, until this little guy moved and scared me.

This temple was simply stunning.  It's red stones really make it stand out from the rest of the other temples.  I thought the other temples had amazing carvings, but this one was even better.

The temples were amazing.  There are not words to describe them, especially when you think about these amazing places being built without modern power tools or machinery.  Humans are amazing.  

After the awe of the temples and the wonder of human creations, I then took a 6 hour bus ride to Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia.  Unfortunately Phnom Penh is not a celebration of humans, instead it is a place to see the horrors and evil of humans.  France colonized Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in the late 1800's.  It wasn't until 1953 that Cambodia declared independence.  Shortly after Cambodia was brought into the Vietnam war.  The war in Cambodia and Laos is known as the Secret War as publicly the US said they never crossed the borders outside of Vietnam.  Because of this many people joined forces with the Communist North Vietnamese or Viet Cong.  The Cambodian Communist part was known as the Khmer Rouge.  The Khmer Rouge controlled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.  In those 3 years the Khmer Rouge was responsible for around 3 million deaths, nearly 20% of the population.  Half of those deaths were executions the other half starvation.  While in Phnom Penh I visited S-21 which was a horrible prison.  20,000 prisoners went through the prison.  After visiting the prison I then went to the killing fields.  The killing fields is one site of mass graves outside of Phnom Penh.  Prisoners were taken from S-21 to the killing fields where they were killed and dumped into pits.  It was a terrible place to visit.  For obvious reasons I did not take any pictures of these places.  

After visiting these places, it is easy to fall into despair but then I was able to see the happy children returning home from school.  These children are the first generation in hundreds of years who will hopefully not see war in their lifetime.  Even with all the horrors the Cambodian people have seen, they are amazingly friendly and gracious.  I am really glad that I was able to visit this place.