The temples of Angkor

Listening to the very sound advice of James, instead of doing the boring 170km from Battambang to Siem Reap, we opted for a lovely boat trip on the Tonle Sap lake. Half of it was through a maze of fishing nets and the other half through a maze of bushes, trees and branches. 

A spotter sat on the front side and signaled the captain when to turn left and when right. We passed by a million floating villages, interesting how life is practically the same, only difference that people use canoes instead of their legs. 

I wondered if there is any sort of sewage system or whether everything ends up in the water. At least there was a drinking water station in one of the villages that probably does the rounds all day.

7 sunny hours later we got to the mad house called Siem Reap, a small town that receives about 4000 visitors per day, whose center is a proper tourist trap, with hundreds of bars and restaurants stacked one next to the other, where there is something for everyone, from fancy french restaurants to foot fish massage(I ended up putting my face in there but that's another story), in the end of the day you can have great fun if you feel like it. My favourite bit was a “Lost in translation” night, ending up in a karaoke room, and boy, I have to say, khmers are pros in this, both me and Beate, a German girl did our best but sucked big time, whereas for our khmer friends it seemed like second nature. As for a guesthouse, Yellow is the best one I've stayed in so far, its staff and owner are friendly, funny, kind and can arrange whatever you need, go there and you won't regret it.

Did you say "union"?

 Disturbing findings of the day: Had a conversation with a tuk tuk driver, apparently there are close to a thousand of them in Siem Reap their main income coming from taking the tourists around the temples, usually 10 usd for a full day, not a bad deal for either side. The government is in talks with a chinese company that will bring and operate an equally large amount of battery operated tuk tuks and have exclusive rights for the trip to the temples, basically tough luck for all the tuk tuk drivers around. I naively asked him if they have a union. Here's the story he gave me. The hotel employee's union is supposedly the strongest around. A couple of years back, a major hotel in Siem Reap decides not to pay overtimes to their employees. They go on strike, having a protest in front of the hotel everyday. The hotel owners bribe whoever it is they need to bribe, the police comes-from a different province of course, you don't want them to hit their own relatives, everybody's kicked out, the hotel hires new employees, end of story. This is Cambodia.

The temples of Angkor are the obvious highlight of the area. I'll refrain from writing my thoughts about them, only to avoid embarrassment, it would be some silly sentences full of superlatives. I do have to say I was a bit daunted by the heaps of tourists everywhere-even for a place this vast it was too many of them, but in every single temple I could find my spot, sit down and marvel at the beauty of both humankind and nature. I might sound a bit heretic, but I found Angkor Wat underwhelming. Its scale is almost beyond comprehension, and the bas reliefs in the outer perimeter are exquisite but Bayon, with its chaotic, multi-leveled architecture and mystifying heads overlooking everything was, well, you see, I'm going into superlative mode again...

Oh God, here I come

The scale of everything made it difficult to understand why the stairs were always so narrow and long. My idea was that they ran out of budget. 

I could see the king gathering his accountants and going through everything, realising that there was not a penny left in the depository, but the only thing missing was the stairs, and then making the hard decision of using half as many needed.”But, your majesty”, “No but, just do it, cut them in half!”

 

The official -but less interesting-explanation is that in order to reach god you have to struggle. Not anymore though. In all the high temples there is proper wooden staircase made for the visitors to use. Which made it even more tempting to use the old-and blocked to the public-ones. After a while even that became boring, so for the rest of the day Beate and I climbed all the high temples we could find, usually via the most unorthodox route.

 

The area is infested with bad manered monkeys, most of them obese because tourists feed them all the time. This one in particular, after getting only one of my bananas instead of the whole chunk, grabbed my ice coffee, removed the straw, and drank it all in a matter of seconds. Cheeky bastard.

No pictures will do justice to the place but here's a few to give you an idea. On a technical note, some of them are HDR, mostly due to the high contrast conditions. I tried to be gentle with the tone mapping in most of the cases.

Time for some 3D extravaganza. All of them are in cross-eyed format, meaning you don't need glasses to view them. If you don't know how, here's a good tutorial: http://www.neilcreek.com/2008/02/28/how-to-see-3d-photos/

Here's a couple of easy ones to get you started(sorry, I couldn't resist):

Another technical note: Shooting single-camera 3D without a slider is not the easiest thing, especially if there's tons of tourists about to enter the frame so sometimes the I/A is too big. I corrected most of the non time-related or barrel distortion disparities but give me a break, I'm on the road, got a tiny netbook and not much time to spare!

At some point, Joel, Beate and I decided to sneak in the temples at night. As we cycled the 15km to get there, what with the moonlit trees casting their shadows to the street, the stillness of the place, the childlike joy of doing something forbidden, I thought I wouldn't mind even if we got caught before entering, I was having a great time already. Far from it though, the few guards around were fast asleep, we did have to tip-toe here and there and I almost tripped over a mosquito net inside Angkor Wat(what a great place to sleep in!) but other than that it was a walk in the park, and what a walk. Being there without the thousands of people, sitting on top of Takeo, strolling around Bayon and Angkor Wat, listening only to the animals of the surrounding jungle, watching these massive structures change shape as the moon went in and out of the clouds and letting it all sink in should be enough, but we topped it by climbing one of the towers of Bayon, a nice 20m vertical ascent with a bit of a hairy descent. Beautiful. For a brief second I wished I had a better camera and a tripod, but I knew it wouldn't make a difference, it's all in my head and it's a night I will never forget. Enough with the sentimental crap, here's a few photos.