Siem Reap, Cambodia

Cambodia

"Who has eight thumbs and likes to party?"
-DP

We got into Cambodia at around 7pm. After getting through customs we went to change out all our Thai Bahts to Cambodian Reils (KHR). Taking just the spare change we had we ended up with 143,000 KHRs! Upon receiving the money I shouted, "Make it rain!" and tossed the bills up in the air and danced around as they fell. Right in front of the money exchange guy. Turns out that it's around 38000 KHRs to $1 so it was only worth $35. In Siem Reap they actually used US dollars mostly so it ended up being not all that useful, but having a bunch of 20,000ths was pretty fun.

Cambodia is home to many temples, Angkor Wat being the most famous. Most of these were built around thousand years ago back when it was the home of the biggest civilization of its time. We got a guide to show us around. It ended up being a smart move as there was a lot to see and we only had a few days.
The biggest Temple is Angkor Wat. Angkor means capital city and Wat means temple. The temple is enormous and is pretty incredible to see in person. The detail in some of the carving is simply amazing. There are still finding new temples in the jungle all over Cambodia.

One of the first places was Angkor Thom with its many faces.

The biggest temple we saw was Angkor Wat

One of the temples, Ta Promh, is called the Tomb Raider temple because Angelina Jolie actually filmed some of Tomb Raider there. It was used because there are trees growing in and on the temple like you would expect if it was old and long forgotten.

And Bantey Srei is known as the Lady Temple because of the different sand stone used that is slightly pink and because of its very intricate carvings.

We visited a temple on a hill for sun set the first day. A lot of other people were doing the same thing and some of the steps were very steep. You had to basically climb up a while to get on to the temple. It looked like a zombie apocalypse as the horde scaled the wall. Unfortunately it was very cloudy and we didn't get to see much.

You Alerted The Horde!

The history in Cambodia is interesting. They are about half Buddhist and half Hindu. During their history they would have kings that were one or the other and often mixing the two religions. Our guide we often point out to us where a carving of Buddha was either cut off or altered to reflect a Hindu god. I saw this a lot in Egypt too, when one pharaoh would take over he would go about destroying evidence of the previous ruler. I thought it was interesting to see something similar in these temples.

The second day our guide brought us to a fishing village. I was expecting a small village by a river or lake but instead we saw a whole town that was basically living in the middle of the lake.

During the dry season they live on the land, but during the rainy season the lake floods and they end up living right in the middle of it. There were a ton of boats and even small kids were padding them from house to house.

Our stay in Cambodia was very brief and interesting. Everyone we met was very friendly and the temples they have are simply amazing.