September 20: Angkor Ruins

Rain, rain, rain. Today was a wet day. It started raining a few minutes before we left for our first day at the Angkor ruins, and it did not stop for the entire tour. You might think the rain made for a miserable day walking around ancient stone temples. The weather certainly presented some challenges: 1,000-year-old stone steps are slippery when they’re wet; mud gets into your shoes; the moisture in the air fogs up camera lenses making them temporarily useless; and it sucks being so soaked that not only is your wallet wet, but the money in your wallet is wet. But actually, the rain may have been a good thing. The throngs of tourists that the guide books warn about never materialized, so we never had to wait to enter any ruin, and rarely did we find that other tourists were in our way (or we in theirs). Unlike so many, we’ll always have memories of standing atop temples and looking out on sweeping lawns devoid of Westerners in cutoffs and floppy hats or Japanese girls in unbelievably bright colored plastic shoes. The other benefit of the rain was that the temperature was actually comfortable. The heat had been consistently oppressive ever since we arrived.

We decided to splurge and hire a driver and a guide, and boy are we glad we did. Khom got us where we needed to be with a minimum of fuss and cost, and he was always ready to retrieve us when we were ready to go. Yon was not only very informative about the ruins and Cambodian history but also about life in Cambodia today. We had long conversations about religion, language, and even farming. We liked them both so much that we hired them again to take us on another tour of more ruins tomorrow.

Our first stop was at Angkor Thom, which I think we all agree was our favorite. The first photo was taken on the bridge approaching the gate. (I have to apologize for today’s photos. My camera really did fog up inside, and I literally had nothing dry to wipe it with, so some photos are fuzzy.) The photo below is of one of the four causeways entering Angkor Thom. Both sides of the causeway are lined with figures, one side a queue of demons, the other a queue of gods. These are the demons.

Below is Bayon, which is inside the Angkor Thom complex.There are several towers with these faces pointing in the four compass directions.

Here are various shots from other sites in the Angkor Thom complex, including the Elephant Terrace and the Terrace of the Leper King.

We spent a fair bit of time at Ta Prohm, but my camera was out of commission for all of that, so I’ll have to get photos from Jan and Tony. Ta Prohm, which is outside the Angkor Thom complex, is the site where enormous tree roots appear to be consuming the structures. You’ve probably seen photos of it.

After Ta Prohm, we visited Angkor Wat and stayed there for the remainder of today’s tour.