The highlight of Cambodia for most people and myself was the Temples of Angkor in Siem Reap. They are breathtaking religious monuments scattered throughout the jungle and considered by many to be one of the most inspired spectacular monuments ever conceived by the human mind.
The temples were built between the 9th and 13th centuries and in their time there were over 20,000 people living in and around them. There are over 100 temples covering 35 square kilometres. Sadly though, they have been badly damaged by the many civil disputes and wars that have gone on in Cambodia. When the Khmer Rouge came into power they went through all of the temples knocking the heads off of every Buddha statue and devastating as much as they could.
Part of the charm to the Angkor Wat is that it hasn`t really been kept up it all looks original. You don`t feel like you are in a tourist trap. While walking though them it feels as though you are someone like Indiana Jones or maybe Lara Croft who has just discovered these ancient ruins that no one has set foot or eyes on in a thousand years!
One of the most impressive temples is the Jungle Temple or Temple of Ta Prohm, which is slowly being reclaimed by the jungle. The exposed tree roots cover areas of the temple looking like they are nurtured by the grey stone rather than the soil beneath. Angkor`s Ta Prohm temple will be familiar to anyone who has seen the movie Tomb Raider I. Several scenes of Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) in action were filmed against a backdrop of magnificent banyan and kapok trees growing in and through the temple walls.
It is suggested to avoid the temples midday because of the extreme heat. My friends and I slept in every day we were there, so by the time we got to the temples it was just hitting the hottest time. We spent 3 days wandering through Angkor Wat and came nowhere near to seeing it all. You could spend weeks exploring this maze of spectacular religious monuments.
More distracting than the heat are the children, some of whom live rough around the temple complex and live off of touting postcards and trinkets. There are friendly ones with shy smiles, but generally most of them will mob foreigners being very persistent and rude if you don`t buy anything. Like most, we paid a lot of attention to them at first buying almost everything they were selling until we had 2 of everything after a couple days they all got to know us and I think we were bigger suckers, mostly because everywhere we went they
would follow but thankfully would leave us alone when we went into the temples. Finally we got annoyed and when we stopped buying stuff the kids got real nasty with us, trying anything from crying to swearing at us to get us to buy more. In the end our experiences with the temple kids were memorable and entertaining you just have to know how to deal with them.
Only within the last decade has Angkor Wat become a big tourist destination. In the early 90`s there were still pockets of the Khmer rouge all around the country and a large amount of them were in the Siem Reap/Angkor area. The ruins and surrounding area were also littered with land mines.
Very soon there will be thousands of people walking around the site a day and when that happens no one will be allowed to enter the temples anymore because of the damage the traffic will cause.
Go there soon!
