Tomb Raiders?

7 May 06

Siem Reap, Cambodia

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Late morning, but we awake again to another procession of elaborately dressed people walking down the street heading to the temple. On slate for today was another group of Ankgor Wat temples on what is considered the Grand Tour loop. We take a totally different road to the temples--this time driving through immense agricultural areas with orchards and farms. The first temple was Pre Rup which boasted a great view of East Mebom temple.

Pre Rup was built in the middle of the 10th Century during Rajendravarman's reign. It boasts imposing brick towers with lintels. The views from the upper terrace of some of the neighboring temples are spectacular. You can even see Angkor Wat from there despite it being some 10km away. Pre Rup also has a large moat that surrounds its although it's not as impressive as Angkor Wat's moat.

Another set of steep stairs heading up to the central upper terrace of Pre Rup. Notice Trekkie & rnrB negotiating the steps. Trkr and I were already at the top! These weren't as steep as those of Angkor Wat. Once at the top there was an elaborate panel that boasted Sanskrit lettering.

The next temple we explored was East Mebon. What was interesting about this temple were the large elephant statues around the main terrace. This one still had its tail and tusks and quite a bit of detail on its body. The temple was also surrounded by large Banyan trees.

The next temple we toured was Ta Som. We marvelled at the giant tree that had grown over the rear entrance. It towers over Trekkie, rnrB & trkr. Trekkie's 6'2" so that should show you really how large this tree is!

While wandering around Ta Som we met several children who were selling trinkets--which is quite common around all the temples. The children are selling trinkets they make to earn money to pay for their daily tuition. The children attend school in half-day sessions. They must raise the money themselves in order to be able to attend. It's a very eye-opening experience to witness this system in action. It makes us realize how blessed our nation is in that it's able to educate the majority of children--unlike other less fortunate countries around the world. This particular boy is named Som and he's deaf & mute. He befriended us and was very impressed when I signed a few words to him. He drew some pictures of children and flowers for us and wrote us a little note on the pictures. He had an odd collection of coins tourists had given him and asked if we could swap the coins out for either Riel or US dollar bills--as they don't use coins in Cambodia at all. We obliged figuring it was the least we could do. You realize how poor people are when instead of keeping 'interesting foreign' coins as souvenirs they insist on converting them to money they can really use for food or tuition. It definitely conveys a strong message!

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As we were heading to the next temple on our queue, we met up with several other children who had these assortments of coins in various currencies. They begged us to 'exchange' their hodge-podge assortment of coins for bills they could use. What impressed me so much about these children was their ability to keep & convert the various currencies straight in their heads--they had at least a dozen different currencies!!! (US $, Canadian $, Euro $, Malaysian, Thai Baht, Korean Won, Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc). One girl in particular never missed a beat when 'converting' the amounts of each coin. What was even more impressive is that she was honest in her dealings, too. In fact, everybody in Cambodia had been very honest with us--which was nice to see because they had plenty of opportunities to snooker us and each time they chose the honest path instead. I was quite impressed! These children are very intelligent, quick on their feet and beyond tenacious. I'm in total awe of them and develop this intense desire to want to help improve their situation in any way that I can. They're full of potential but completely stuck in a country that provides little future for them. If only we could snatch up each one of them and provide them with food, housing & a great education--the world would be that much more incredible place!!!

We then visited Prasat Kravan--a temple consecrated in 921BC under Harshavarman I's reign. It boasts unique bas-reliefs and an unusual layout of 5 brick towers in one row. What struck me about this temple was that it appeared almost pink & that it was constructed of bricks--unlike most of the other temples we'd seen. It was bright and almost looked new compared to the others.

Here are some boys who took an instant liking to trkr. They kept performing this Incredible Hulk performance amongst eachother. It was hilarious! We hadn't seen many child 'tourists' in Cambodia yet so we're guessing the local kids were excited to see younger tourists along the way.

One thing we ran across during our outings in Cambodia were these little palm leaf bundled packages of palm sugar. Here trkr is holding one of these little bundles.

When you disassembled this tidy package of palm sugar you found a row of palm sugar candy disks about a centimeter thick. It was really good!

Here's an interesting statue at the Neah Peak temple we revisited today in order to reattempt the GC in the area.

And another view of Prasat Kravan.

Next on our slate was Ta Prohm--the temple where some scenes from the movie Tomb Raider was filmed. Having not seen the film I hadn't a clue about what occurred in the movie--I just knew that Angelina Jolie tried to sniff a Jasmine flower and fell through the floor into the tomb below. The closest connection that I have to that movie is that I share a name with the main character--although I pronounce mine the Russian way. ;) So for all you Tomb Raider fans out there, here's what it really looks like today. Of course, the movie isn't what drew us to the site but rather the Ta Prohm Terracache that was hidden on the grounds, instead--which we found with little difficulty, FTF, to boot! ;)

Here's the famous 'tree' where Angelina Jolie fell through to the tomb. This picture doesn't really convey how big it is.

Here's the same tree with Trekkie, rnrB & trkr in it. Again, Trekkie's 6'2"!!! It was mighty impressive!

Here's another one of those Banyan trees that had overgrown the temples. The roots alone were massive! The trunks were gigantic! Walking among all these massive trees has been such a neat experience. At home in Washington, we often see these giant trees that seem to be suspended in mid-air by nothing but roots--knowing that at some point they had grown atop nurse logs and eventually the nurse logs disintegrated--leaving the giant network of roots supporting the younger tree. This is the same concept here---all these temples had become completely overgrown and nature had been taking its course. When archaeologists stumbled on the temples a couple of decades ago they tried to repair as many of the temples as they could but soon realized that by removing the trees they may damage the structure of the temple--so they decided to leave many of the trees. I wonder if another reason is that they didn't want to kill a living thing such as a tree as is quite common in the Buddhist faith? Who knows--but I'm certainly glad we got to see these impressive sights!