Day 14

Our first full day in Cambodia started well before dawn. We were heading out to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise. There were only seven of us from the whole tour who got up to do it. You have to stop at the entrance of the temple site to have a picture made for the ticket. We got to the temple just as it was starting to get light. I got a couple of pictures of the main gate and causeway as the colors were starting to change, and we headed into the temple. We weren't the only people there by a long shot. It was hard to get a picture without other people in it. I found out later that this was nothing, though. When the tourists really start arriving, you can't get a picture of anything without someone posing for you. We ran into the crew from the jet here. Some of them look the same, but some look very different in their civilian clothes. It seemed ironic that there were more of them (sixteen) than there were of us who bothered to get up and come out. It was good to see them relaxing and having fun, though. After getting our sunrise pictures, a few of us decided to stay there and keep looking around while the rest of us went back to the hotel to have breakfast. We also wanted to join up with the rest of our family. Breakfast was delicious. It has been the most consistently good meal on the whole trip. I guess eggs and bacon are hard to mess up. We met up with my father, sister and Larry and managed to get on the same bus to the temple. Instead of heading back to Angkor Wat, we went to Ta Prohm, which is also called the "Tomb Raider Temple". This is where parts of the Tomb Raider movie were shot. It has large sections that have strangler fig trees growing into the walls, and it looks very intriguing. They can't remove the trees without destroying the walls, so they leave them. Plus it looks pretty cool and attracts tourists. At the entrance there was a group of musicians playing that had all been injured by land mines. The music was very soothing, but I don't think it's something I would necessarily want on my MP3 player. We left a donation, but didn't buy their CD. After looking around Ta Prohm, we headed back to Angkor Wat. We got long explanations of the stone work. There are lots and lots of images of snakes there. And birds. The temple was built as a temple to Vishnu, who apparently had two main servants: a snake and a bird. Both of which he rode on to get around at various times. So those images are repeated a lot in the stone work. There are also hundreds if not thousands of Apsaras, or dancing girls carved into the stone. These are minor divinities that danced to entertain the gods. Each one is slightly different. Just the amount of carving that went into the temple is amazing. There's barely a spot on a wall or window anywhere that doesn't have some kind of carving. However, after a while it achieves a certain sameness. I don't know, it just didn't capture me like Machu Picchu did. The quality of the stone work didn't seem as good, though it was much, much more ornate.

At the end of the temple tour, we went back to the hotel for lunch. Lunch was a buffet, but a very impressive buffet. They had grilled pork, cornish hens in a delicious curry sauce, coconut rice, and a dozen other dishes. The array of desserts was almost overwhelming. I had to try several. They were all yummy. Sorry, Dan, still no pictures. I had had enough camera-toting by the time we got back from the temple. After lunch we got to do a little shopping. First was the Artisans School. They teach wood and stone carving, silver work, and sewing and fabric work. They had some very nice wares for sale there, at mostly reasonable prices. Jan found a few things to pick up. Then we were headed to the old market, which reminded me of the stalls at the bottom of the mountain from Machu Picchu. There were a bunch of little stalls all selling very similar items. They all seemed to have some silver items, some silk purses, wallets, statues of Buddha, and things like that. We found a couple of things to buy there as well. The quality wasn't as good as the Artisans School, but the prices were better. We didn't get long there, though. We were scheduled to go back out to see Angkor Thom, so we had to head back to the hotel. We skipped the afternoon outing because it didn't sound like the afternoon temples were going to be any different from the morning temples.

I spent the afternoon catching up my blog, organizing pictures, and helping Sam with his homework. He had two labs to try to get done while he's here so he can study for his quiz and take it when we get to India. He had loaned his laptop charger to someone else on the tour who misplaced his, and Sam was almost done with the second lab when the battery died. So he had to wait until after dinner to get it back and finish. Dinner was a feast. They had different stations with various types of food. They had a tempura station, a tandoori oven, a Khmer Kitchen with stir-fried items, a Mongolian Wok station, a Bar-B-Cue station where they had several delicious grilled meats, a salad station, and two dessert stations. I ate so much I didn't have room for dessert, though. Again, sorry Dan. There was also a show with dinner. They had some dancers show off some Cambodian dance numbers. One reminded us of the Peruvian dance that turned into a fight between the woman and the man. The dancers were very good, and the show was entertaining. It had been a very long day, though, so we had to leave and turn in.