ANGKOR WAT, Siem Reap-PART 2 (Nov.30-Dec.4)

Angkor Wat

Thoughts and impressions
Artemis

It’s scorching hot. I’m in a tuk tuk, sitting on the seat looking at the city as we drive by. The tuk-tuk has leather seats so its makes it even hotter. Luckily the wind is blowing on my face and body so it’s not that bad. I’m watching people live there lives, doing all the usual routines. I start to like being in a tuk tuk because it’s not hot while its moving. As we drive I smile at everyone I can, and they usually smile back. If I don’t smile when they smile at me and their car speeds ahead, I realise that my face must have looked unfriendly. So I try to always keep a friendly smile on my face.

The tuk tuk slows down and I see that we’ve approach some kind of ancient gate with a visible large temple behind it. There is what looks like a lake (man made) in front of the gate (but later I found out it served the purpose of a moat). The tuk tuk driver parked across the street from the long low bridge that takes you across the moat and through the gate.

We get out of the tuk tuk and start walking across the bridge (you could call it a bridge but it was more of a walkway). We got to the huge gate/wall and made our way into the ancient world of Angkor Wat.


The first temple was the Angkor Wat temple. We stayed there for about an hour then moved on.


To me the main Angkor Wat temple was the least interesting, it was so big and wasn’t very memorable. But the second temple was amazing probably my favourite out of theme all. It was called Angkor Thom. I think what interested me was how old it was. Coming from Canada where the oldest thing is 400 years old its quite a surprise to see some things that are 1,000 years old and there practically crumbling before your eyes.

In Angkor Thom, there were huge stone spires that were hollow with faces on them. The spires were in all the corners of the temple. There was also one huge spire in the middle of the temple. My dad and I saw inside one spire and it was infested with bats. Since there was no light coming from the top all the bats stayed there, we saw lots flying around the top and there where tones that you couldn’t see. Another thing I like about Angkor Thom was that it wasn’t to big like Angkor Wat and it wasn’t to small so you didn’t get bored of it, or tired of walking around. The Angkor Thom was my favourite temple we saw in Angkor.


Another really intriguing temple was the temple in the jungle. I don’t recall its name. It was one of the older temples (as Angkor Thom). The interesting thing about it was that these massive trees had grown into this crumbling building. The tree roots had swivelled and twisted their way through the walls. It was fascinating to see these beautiful trees inside the temple (well what was left of the temple.)





The temples weren’t crumbling just because of age. Pol Pot, a crazy leader of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970’s who tried to kill everything that involved religion he had tried to destroy the Angkor temples by bombing some of them. Also if you look inside at the statues of Buddha you would see all the heads had been taken off the statue’s. This is because people would steal the heads and try to sell them.


After we saw all the temples we made are way to the sunset. its supposed to be legendary. We park the tuk tuk and the tuk tuk driver says to follow a trail. We do as he tells us and start walking up the little trail to the top of the hill to see the sun set. As we are hike up there are lots of other tourists. the walk was about 15 minutes long. When you get to the top of the hill there is a huge temple to see the sunset on. We start to climb the steps of the temple. It is the sun worship temple. The stairs to get to the top of the sun worship temple are so steep it may as well be a ladder. We start to climb. Once we get to the top of the steps (ladder) we’re all sweating. We got there early so we had to wait 30 minutes for the sun to set. The sunset itself was pretty ordinary I think it was because it was cloudy out. After the sun had set the sky went pink that was beautiful but I wouldn’t say it was amazing. When you walk back down the hill its very dark so you can’t see where your going. All in all it was an enjoyable experience

We saw lots of other temples that day but the others didn’t catch my eye like the jungle temple and Angkor Thom.

When we got back to the hotel my feet hurt so much from walking all day. I think I’ve seen enough temples for a lifetime.


By Artemis Walden