Day 1. Angkor Wat - Small Circuit

Before the tour

I woke up at 3am, completely awake, full of energy and could not go back to sleep. Finally it was 6:30 am, and I went to the hotel restaurant to have breakfast. I pre-ordered the "local set" the night before. For $5, I got soup, fried rice with a sunny-side-up egg, fruits, water melon juice and latte. The soup and the sauce had a good mixture of light sweetness and spiciness. 



Angkor Wat

The driver Poly and the tour guide Sok met with me at 7am. I already booked my 3-day ticket online, so we went to Angkor Wat directly. Sok not only explained the history, the culture, but also pointed out to me good spots to take photos and took great photos of me. 




One huge carving on the wall is called The Churning of the Ocean of Milk. It showed the devas (good guys) and asuras (bad guys) working together to churn the ocean to make something. They held a giant snake, and pulled back and forth of the snake. In the middle is the 4-armed god. On the left side are the bad guys, they have bulging eyes and angry eyebrows. On the right side are the good guys, they look calm.




Angkor Thom

Angkor means city. Wat means pagoda. Thom means big. Angkor Thom used to be a big city where half a million people lived in the 12th-century. We visited several places in Angkor Thom.

1. South Gate

Angkor Thom had four gates at each side, the south gate for monks, east gate for royalty and soldiers, north and west gates for ordinary people. There is also a fifth ghost gate on the east side for prisoners and funeral transportation.

We entered from the south gate. The story of Churning of the Ocean of Milk was depicted here with good guy statues on one side of the road and bad guys on the other side. Similar to the carving on the wall at Angkor Wat, the good guys look calm while the bad guys look angry.



2. Bayon Temple

In Bayon Temple, there is a giant carved wall called Khmer Army March. It's about Khmer soldiers marching with Chinese mercenaries to fight the Chams (current day Vietnam). Chinese soldiers had pointy beard, commanders rode horses. Khmer soldiers often wear ropes, commanders rode elephants. They also got horses from the Chinese as gifts. They fought the Chams on boats. The war last four years and the Chams were defeated.


Speaking of wars, Cambodia has a history of being invaded by neighboring Vietnam and Thailand. Siem Reap means Thailand (Siem) was defeated (Reap), named after a victory against Siem. 

The most famous feature of the Bayon temple is that it has many gigantic smiling faces carved on the four sides of towers. 



3. Baphuon Temple

This is a massive pyramid-shaped temple. I climbed up and had a great view from the top. Sok told me that there is a reclining buddha at the back of the pyramid. With his help, I finally was able to see it. See whether you can see the buddha's head and nose on the last photo below.





4. Terrace of the Elephants

There are statues of elephants with their trunks on top of lotus flowers.

Throughout Angkor Wat, there are three kinds of mythical creatures that are very commonly featured.

Singha: a lion that protects the land. Has a cute butt.


Garuda: Half-man, half-bird, protects the sky. Some times it's fused with Nega below to be the head part of the snake.


Nega: a snake with 7 heads, protects the water. The photo below was taken at Angkor Wat earlier.



We also passed the Terrace of the Leper King. Did not enter. Sok told me a story which I did not understand. We exited Angkor Thom through the east gate and met Poly there to drive to the next temple. 

Ta Prohm

This is called the Tomb Raider Temple or Lara Croft Temple. It was a filming location for the 2001 Tomb Raider movie starring Angelina Jolie. The prominent feature of this temple is that it is swallowed by trees. 

Back in 2001, there was only a small trail leading to this temple, with land mines outside of the trail. Amazing that the film crew found this place. Now it is a major tourist attraction: roads were build, land mine cleared. 





We wrapped up our trip at 1pm. It was a hot (90s F) day. I brought my bottle of water. Poly also prepared chilled water for me. I finished my water and a bottle from Poly, like 1.5L water, without ever needed to go to the bathroom. That was how much I sweat. Starting early at 7am helped to avoid crowds and heat. I also brought sunblock, which was needed.

I bought Angkor Wat pass online, and downloaded the PDF file on my cell phone. This was sufficient for everywhere. I also had it printed out and that also worked.

After the tour

I was dropped off at Khmer Grill for lunch. I ordered pork ribs ($3.75), fish amok ($5), and beer ($1). Should have ordered only one dish, because I could not finish the food. 



Afternoon over-eating, I walked back to my hotel room, took a shower, and relaxed. 

At 3:30pm, the hotel offers afternoon tea. I liked the ginger tea and the Cambodian rice crackers. 


I booked online an 1-hr Khmer massage ($8) for 4:30pm at the Blue Spa earlier. They arranged a free tuk-tuk pickup at the elephant hotel at 4:15pm. At the spa, they offered tea before and after the massage. 

After the massage, I used Grab to get a tuk-tuk to go back to the hotel. The massage made me so comfortable that I went to sleep at 6pm.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 3. July 5. Saturday. River and Mountain

Image
Breakfast This hotel also included breakfast buffet. The restaurant had a great view of a lake. River I went to the park 甸溪河湿地公园. The park was built along a river, with paved trails on both sides. I walked from the south end entrance all the way to the north end entrance, 8km (5 miles). There were many trees along the paths, providing shades. The park was free and there were many locals here, mostly seniors exercising. There had been record rain fall the past month, so the water level was very high in the river and the water was muddy. People told me that the water was normally clear and much prettier in other times. Mountain At the end of the river park, it was the entrance to a mountain park called 锦屏山公园. There was a giant buddha statue on top of the mountain. One could climb up the stairs with 1999 steps, or take the shuttle. The entrance fee was 50 RMB, shuttle was 15 one-way, 20 round-trip.  I purchased the roundtrip shuttle, but in hindsight, only one-way was needed, bec...
Read more

Northern Lights

Image
Preparation 2025 is solar maximum, peak of a 11-year solar activity cycle, which means best chance to see northern lights (aurora). One cannot see norther lights in the summer due to the constant daylight. I wanted to see it in the Spring. Here is how I chose the travel dates and place to see northern lights: New moon . Strong moonlight may reduce the chance to see northern lights.  Jan 29 is new moon. 27-day northern light forecast   It is not accurate, but I thought it was better than nothing.  I saw two red bars (Kp=5) on Jan 30 and 31.  Clear weather. Clouds will block northern lights. I searched Accuweather weather forecast  for Fairbanks (Alaska, USA), Whitehorse (Canada), and Yellowknife (Canada) to see which place would have clear weather on these days.  Yellowknife was in favor of good weather. That made me to book a trip to Yellowknife on Jan 29 - Feb 5. Before the trip, I upgraded my phone plan so that my SIM card would work in Canada. Goo...
Read more

Day 1. July 3. Thursday. Lakes and Hot springs

Image
Breakfast The hotel 湖泉酒店 was a big resort. We stayed at building E, which was close to the hot springs. The breakfast was in another building 400 meters away. The hotel provided constant shuttles, so we took the shuttle to the breakfast building. The buffet was huge, like a full dinner buffet in the US. The restaurant was beautiful too, they even had an indoor koi pond. SIM card After breakfast, I called the local 中国电信 store asking them about purchasing a SIM card with a US passport. They first said that they required a working permit. After I insisted that this was not the case and that they should check the policy, they said that they would call me back. Not giving up, I took Didi to get to the store and pleaded with the store clerk in person. She said that they had not done it before. She called some people and I waited over one hour before she finally got it approved. The card cost 100 RMB, less than half of what I paid at the airport. The person was very nice, she said that ev...
Read more