The magnificent Angkor

7 02 2010

As I said in the last post we have been staying in Siem Reap and going off to explore the Angkor temples for the last three days.  The temples that the Khmers have build are amazing.  The temples around Siem Reap are well over 100 in number and were build circa from the year 800 to late twelfth century – at the same time as Iceland was getting fully settled.

At the height of the Khmer empire there were about one million people living in the city.  To provide some context – London had some 50 thousand inhabitants at the time.  According the the Khmer people, only the gods were worthy of stone buildings so both the public and the royal court lived in wooden houses that are all long gone and only the temples remain.

The majority of the temples were build as Hindu temples but some of them were build as Buddhist temples and others were converted into Buddhist temples later on.  It seems like the kings back in the day weren’t really sure what to believe and to the people it didn’t seem to matter too much either, maybe there isn’t so much difference between Hinduism and Buddhism – after all Buddha was born, lived and died a Hindu – if I have my religions correct.

We started our three day tour by hiring a tuktuk to take us to some of the minor temples, we wanted to start small and build momentum.  A lot of the smaller temples were just wonderful.  Their condition varied greatly in terms of condition but that was a part of the charm.  We had great access to the temples and there were not a lot of people around, which is always a plus.  The weather was very hot and the tuktuk drive between the temples was refreshing and provided a cooling breeze.

The next day we decided to rent bikes and bike to some of the temples closer to Siem Reap.  Having the bikes gave us great freedom and we could do everything at our speed.  We spent a long time exploring the big big temple with all the big faces (See previous picture) and others around it.
 

On our way back we ran into a group of monkeys that live in the surrounding forest.  They seemed quite used to people coming with food and weren’t afraid of us at all.  One was even cheeky enough to jump up to the basket on my bike and steal my water bottle – he wasn’t satisfied with just bananas that one.

For the third day we had saved the main thing – Angkor Wat and since this was our last destination we decided to take a tuktuk before dawn and watch the sun rise above Angkor Wat – a heavenly sight according to the brochures.  On the way we had a minor mishap when the tuktuk was out of fuel in the middle of the jungle and we had to walk the last 15 minutes in the dark.  We made it before dawn, got a good seat and waited.  The dawn and sunrise was a bit of a disappointment and definitely overhyped.  Angkor Wat turned out to be quite impressive, not quite the crown jewel but nice.  Maybe we had had too many temples in the last days – at least we feel quite satisfied in that regard but the Angkor area is a fantastic spectacle and definitely one of the more interesting wonders of the world.

During the evenings here, we have been going to the night market.  At the night market people are selling all kinds of silk products: scarves, veils, pasminas, table cloths, bed covers and clothes.  They are also selling paintings of the temples, statues, jewelry and a handful of other stuff.  Fish massage seems to be quite hot here as well.  We had seen that before in Bangkok but here it is everywhere.  For a fish massage you sit by a pool and put your feet into the pool and the fish come and nibble at your feet.  They seem to be eating the dead skin cells and this is supposed to be very relaxing and your foot comes out smooth and shiny.

We heard from a group of people from Húsavík that are in Siem Reap just now.  We have been trying to get a hold of them without much luck but hopefully we’ll bump into each other tomorrow – it’s a small world, haah!

Next is one day of chilling in Siem Reap and then we will go by bus to Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital before crossing over to Vietnam.  If there is anything you would like to know, see some pictures off or want me to write about, just go to the blog and post a comment.


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Angkor area

5 02 2010

We bought a three day pass to the Angkor area as there are over 100 temples to look at in the area.  We have been busy all day from early morning to “late” in the evening for two days now and have been loving every minute of it.

We are still as much in love with the Cambodians as on the first day.  The people are just wonderful and extremely happy and they are easy to communicate with since almost all of them speak very good English.  According to where we have traveled, both here and in the past, there seems to be a correlation between how little money people have and how happy they seem.

For tomorrow morning we have saved the crown jewel – Angkor Wat at dawn.  Therefore I’m going to leave this post short and I promise to give a full update with a lot of pictures next time we have a long bus ride :)

There are striking news from ABT were we found the Backgammon board again.  We had kind of agreed to cancel the backgammon series since Elínborg only just learned the game and thought that she didn’t stand a chance, even though she won the first game (with my help).  So we agreed and kind of assumed that I would win the next game and then we could retire the backgammon board.  So we stared playing and Elínborg won not once but twice so she is leading the backgammon part by three victories to null.  Quite impressive ;)

I just updated the map on the right so check that out!
Link to the blog for the Facebook readers


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Siem Reap

4 02 2010

We have absolutely fallen in love with the Cambodians or the Khmers …at least here in Siem Reap.  They are so soft and gentle and polite and always smiling.  We had read so many stories of scams in Cambodia and it looked so dirty and unappealing at first that we were a bit worried but even when they are trying to trick us they are so nice :)

The Khmers are a bit darker than most Thais and a little more delicate and very handsome. It is funny how both of us connected the word Khmer to something bad after the Khmer Rogue and Pol Pot but we noticed that the Cambodians are where proud of being Khmer …well the 90% that are actually Khmer.  So Khmer is just the name of their ethnic group.

We have had some Khmer food already and it was absolutely fantastic.  We had some chicken curry, fish curry and spring rolls and everything was served with rice and a cold beer.  The spring rolls were just good spring rolls but the curries where to die for.

We went to the markets here yesterday and they looked wonderful, both the day market and the night market.  The night market was filled with silk and cotton scarves, pasminas, hammocks and clothes and they also had a lot of things made by Cambodian artists, both paintings and sculptures, mostly from the Angkor temples and the villages around here.  We are definitely feeling the biggest fault of being a backpacker – not having enough space for all the things we want to buy and having to carry everything we do find space for for the next three months.

It is funny how everything here is quoted in US dollars.  There is the Cambodian Riel but we have not seen in used on price tags anywhere.  For $1 you get 4,200 riel so that might be one of the reason but it must be hard for them not to use their own currency that fluctuates according to their economic situation not because of some outside reasons.  They must be suffering now when the dollar has been declining when they shouldn’t be.


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Crossing the Thai-Cambodian border

3 02 2010

After all the stories we had read about the scams people get them selves involved in our border crossing into Cambodia and the ride to Siem Reap was quite unimpressive.  We just walked through, negotiated on a price for the taxi to Siem Reap and off we went.  Maybe it went so well because we were well prepared and knew what to do.  For those that want to make the same trip I’ll start from the beginning in Bangkok.  Other might want to skip this section.

The scams that we had read about before hand were:

  • Visa scam – offering to speed up take care of the visa application for you at ridicules prices
  • Consulate scam – same as above
  • Visa border control scam – border police asking for bribes or they will not process your application anytime soon
  • Money changing scam – say that you need to change into Cambodian Real and giving you horrible rates
  • Guesthouse commission scam – taxis delivering you to a guesthouse for a commission.  The owners getting angry if you don’t stay

Before we came to Bangkok we had already applied for a visa to Cambodia online.  It did cost $25 instead of the regular $20 but the process was smooth and would save us some hassle later on.  Since we had to wait for our visa into Vietnam until 15:00 we decided to take the 16:30 bus from Bangkok to the Thai border town Aranyaprathet since the hotel would be a lot less there than in Bangkok (300 Baht instead of 800 Baht).  We got the skytrain from the Vietnamese embassy to Mohchit station (40 Baht), moto taxi from the sky train station to the close by northern bus station (40 Baht) and a ticket to to Aranyaprathet first class (207 Baht) at booth 30 inside the station.  The bus ride to Aranyaprathet was about four hours and we arrived about 20:30 at the Aranyaprathet bus station.  We took a tuktuk to a hotel we had selected (80 Baht) but that was full so the tuktuk driver suggested The Market Hotel and we agreed.  The Market Hotel was very nice, clean and quite cozy.

We had arranged for our tuktuk driver to pick us up at 08:00 in the morning and take us to the border.  The lady that drove us the night before picked us up but after a 5 minute drive she jumped off and a colleague jumped on.  We weren’t too happy since we kind of trusted the lady but what the heck, I guess there was nothing we could do…  After about 5 minutes of driving the drive wanted to turn left when the sign for the border said straight.  I suspected that he wanted to try the consulate scam where they try to sell you a Cambodian visa for up to twice the price.  I told him I already had a visa and we wanted to go straight to the border.  He complied and drove us as far as he could go and we had to walk the rest.

We saw the signs where to go and followed the Thais that were also crossing.  First we had to fill out health check forms to see if we were healthy enough to enter Cambodia.  None of the Thais had to fill those out so it was a slight annoyance but again, what the heck.  We filled out the forms and were allowed to continue.  After that it became a bit unclear where to go as we skipped the visa application process.  We were soon picked up by a guy that seemed very helpful but we knew right away that he wanted to get us into the “free” bus to the bus/taxi terminal in the middle of nowhere.  He guided us along the long road towards the visa check point.  Along this road were several casinos where the Thais try their luck.  According to our self proclaimed guide, the Cambodians would never gamble – they are too poor.

At the visa check point we filled out another form with more or less the same question we had already answered, both in the health check and on the online visa application.  As we arrived we met some African guys that were having problems getting through but the place was not busy and we were through in 5 minutes.  After the check point our “guide” reappeared and told us that we had to get into the bus that would take us to the bus/taxi terminal.  When he saw that we were resisting a bit he raised his voice and said that the bus was leaving and we had to get in now!  As we were the only foreigners around I told him quietly that we could do what ever we liked, we would just come back later as there were lines of busses there and I was sure that we were not missing out.

Then we walked a bit and were offered a non-union taxi for $35 and we went to check it out.  There were a lot of police men and tourist police men around and some of the seemed annoyed that this guy had us on his hook but we followed anyway.  We negotiated a price of $30 for a taxi for just the two of us the whole way to Siem Reap and all the way to our guest house, paid on arrival.

So off we went and the ride to Siem Reap was un-eventful.  The road was wide and smooth, a really enjoyable ride.  We stopped once to fill the metan-gas tank of the Toyota Camry we were driving, once the driver stopped to pee and once he stopped in front of a sales booth and said he had to use the toilette.  A woman came out and said they wanted to clean the car so we had to go out.  She had all sorts of cool drinks for sale but we had water so we were fine.  Of course no one cleaned the car and the driver came as soon as he saw that we weren’t buying anything  …they have to try, don’t they?  In Siem Reap we had picked out a guesthouse from the Lonely Planet book and told the driver to head there.  He made some phone calls and then stopped at another guesthouse where we were told that our guesthouse was out of business and we should check out theirs.  We told them we weren’t interested and named another one and the drive took us there immediately.  We paid our driver a little tip plus the $30 agreed upon.

We walked around town and with the help of a tuktuk driver we found a likable guesthouse that had a double fan room for the right price ($7 per night).  Tomorrow we plan to start exploring the magnificent temples here including Angkor Wat, the biggest religious building in the world.

We really like the Cambodians so far, even if they are trying to trick us they are polite, soft and gentle.  When they see that we have had enough they leave us alone or do as we wish so it is all good, they are just like the rest of us – just trying to make a living :)

Next post will be less practical and more fun, I promise!


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Cambodia

3 02 2010

Later today we are going over the Cambodian border.  We have read a lot of stories from people going this way.  It seems like there are a lot of scams to be aware of and dirty border guards as well.  I haven’t seen that it is dangerous, more that there are a lot of scams where the people are trying to trick you out of our money by over paying for the Visa in several ways or tricking you into exchanging money with a ridiculous rate or setting you into a guesthouse where the drivers get paid for delivering the guests and everyone gets angry when you, the paid for guest, don’t want to stay at that particular guesthouse.

We decided to go on our own to the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet and go by our selves to the border.  I’ll post later how that goes.  We are quite excited after reading all the stories and we better get going….


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