pictures, but is a massive park filled with numerous ruins in various states of disrepair from the ancient Khmer city of Angkor. It was built in the 12th century in honor of a king, head to Wikipedia if you want more information. We hit up the main temple (Angkor Wat) first-it was huge, outstanding, and stunning. Almost every inch of the temple was covered in ornate carvings supplemented by sculptures and huge friezes on every large wall. It has been amazingly well preserved and restored. What is pretty crazy about it is that it really is just right in the middle of the jungle. If it weren’t for all the roads built between the different ruins, one would have to bring a machete and hiking boots to explore them all.Our next stop was the Bayon of Angkor Thom, the center of the ancient city. It may have been the largest pre-industrial city in the world. I liked these ruins even more than those of the temple. I felt like Indiana Jones wandering around the ruins-as they look like they are just out of a movie. You can climb and wander through all the twists and turns of the ruins-which includes hopping over fallen stone beams more than a few times. There are hundreds of interconnected hallways. Around the top of the city (the buildings all come together and rise up in the center) there are a bunch of four sided phallic columns, with faces carved on each side. The faces, despite being hundreds of years old, maintained a fairly intense stare. I wandered around the structures in awe of the incredible manpower (read: slave power) it must have taken to build such a structure.
We met up and had lunch among the ever-present hawkers. Now, at most tourist destinations, hawkers are a minor, tolerable nuisance. At Angkor Wat, they are a huge part of the experience. Our first encounter was some ladies trying to sell us water when we walked in, we had some with us, so said “no thanks” to which they responded with various responses about us being mean, bad, or something equally disrespectful. I never thought that insulting customers was a good way to garner sales, but it’s the modus operandi at Angkor Wat. Many of them are very young, which is never good to see-it was a Saturday, so I can’t say whether they go to school during the week. Their English was pretty good-it just seemed odd that most of them chose to use it to harass or insult the visitors instead of charm them. Relentless does not even begin to describe them. In the afternoon I had
a great time climbing on the royal palace ruins and walking along the roads between some of the ruins. I caught a glimpse of the sunset from a ruin on top of a hill-with every other tourist that visited that day.Taking the short diversion to Angkor Wat was definitely worth the time and effort. Siem Riep, aside from the fancy tourist hotels, is pretty run-down. There were lots of barefoot kids running around begging and the men sitting on motorcycles offering weed, coke, beautiful girls, and massages didn’t indicate that where was much a rule of law there or many industries producing much wealth. But, the park was amazing, very well kept and one could easily spend two to three days wandering the ruins.
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