The next morning we got up early, around 6:30, then had a nice breakfast on the rooftop. A cook was making omelets, plus there was rice mixed with veggies, French bread and some coffee. The rooftop on our hotel had flowers and plants all around the edge and was overlooking the beautiful river across the street.
Our same tuk-tuk driver picked us up right at 7:30 am and we traveled over to buy our one-day tickets. You could buy either one, two or a three-day pass since there were about 10 different temple cities to check out. Fortunately, (and I say this because this was a looong and hot day touring the temples!) we could only visit the temples for one day. After buying the ticket, we were off again and made our way to the most famous temple city…Angkor Wat. The old temple/ruins was huge so we took about an hour to walk around and observe the amazing and historical architecture. Some tour guides were walking around and trying to give us lots of information in order for us to pay them to be our guides. We were satisfied with taking our own tour by ourselves since we did not have much time and did not want to be listening the entire time, but more observing. The temple was surrounded by paths that led into the forest and a few other small temples. We walked all the way through the temple, climbed to the top of some high view-points (a little scary climbing down this very, very steep and high ladder!! Yikes! How did I ever manage to skydive?), and then took a path into the forest. It was all very interesting to see and upsetting to hear that some of the temple was damaged from the Tuol Sleng Menocide. For example, some heads of animal statues were missing, or there were holes in the temple. We also were able to see some of the huge gold Buddhas in the temple, as well as Cambodian people worshipping and praying.
The next temple city had about 10 different temples in it. It took us about 2 hours to tour. Some of these temples were even more difficult to climb because of not much stepping and no railings plus stones everywhere. I couldn’t imagine visiting these temples at night…it would be beyond creepy because everything is so old and there would be so many places to hide in this building! And because there are no railings and you could easily fall or trip over something if you were not watching where you were going. One of the temples was very unique to me because it had all these women faces into the stones. You can see from my pictures that this made some creative pictures. Keith enjoyed climbing to the top on as many temples as he could. I went to the top for some, but also enjoyed watching Keith race to the very top and through the many mazes that were part of the temples. We noticed a lot of elephants, Buddhas, and stories on the walls of the temples. I’m sure they all were of symbolic meaning. We saw many tourists from all over, including Korea! I knew they were from Korea because they were traveling in big groups and when they took pictures as a group, they would yell “Hana, dul, set”…meaning, “One, Two, Three”. I say hi in Korean to a few of them and they were very excited to hear my Korean, as well as learn that we were living on Jeju Island and teaching there. Aww I love Koreans! They are so sweet, innocent and are smart in that they travel in groups! After this trip, I have learned that traveling in groups saves a lot of money on tours and hotel rooms, and it is very safe as well.
We rested after this long tour and ate some delicious Cambodian food for lunch. Here we met a world traveler named Jack, who is also from the U.S. He told us how he has traveled all around the world when he was younger and how he now sails around the world. It always excites us to hear advice and stories from other travelers and to meet people from all over. After lunch, our tuk-tuk driver rode us to a few more temples throughout the afternoon. The next one was a looooong maze temple. It kept going and going and going around in circles. Every room, hallway or opening seemed to have it’s own special effect with color of stones or images on the stones. It was neat to see the openings to the many different rooms when looking down the long hallway. My favorite temple (the next one we visited) was the site where Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie was filmed. If you have ever seen this movie you would understand how amazingly unique the trees are that wrap around this temple. They are huge trees with too many roots at the bottom to count. Check out some of the pictures! They will illustrate better than my description. I enjoyed taking pictures of them and standing next to them with open eyes wondering how they can be so gigantic! This temple was under construction, possibly to fix what was damaged from filming the movie, but was still very busy because there were areas that you could still tour. The last temple we went to was pretty small and short to go through, but was like a maze inside and had the most marketing. By this, I mean young kids following you around the temple begging and persuading you to buy there souvenirs, such as a flute, or cds, dvds, hats, water, fruit, postcards, etc. Well, we made it past them, although we saw some other tourists struggling and sarcastically arguing back and forth about why they do not need the product or have anyone to give it to.
After a full, long and hot day of visiting the very antique and interesting temple cities, we made our way back to the hotel. Since it was only 4pm, we had about 4 hours until our flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. Therefore, we walked around the city area, looked at more markets, bought a few postcards and shirts, and had an amazing dinner and a few drinks during happy hour. We ordered crocodile, which was sooo delicious! It melted in your mouth and was grilled with veggies right on our table. We also had a tasty, strong lemon-flavored salad, as well as a pasta dish. The restaurant across the street was where we grabbed a few Angkor beers, since it was only 50 cents each because of happy hr! We loved this deal!
This ended our wonderful trip to Cambodia. We were definitely sad to leave the country, but had so many memories, contacts of people we would stay in touch with, as well as pictures and stories to remember the experiences, culture, and people we had met. We were then on our way to the airport, where we would be in Vietnam in only 2 hours!
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