From Ankor Wat we cycled to Ankor Tom, literally Great City, passing through the south gate and towards the central Bayon Temple.
Bayon Temple is famous for the large carved faces protruding from above the temple. The hundreds of faces are that of Lokesvara the bodhisattva, Walking around the temple was quite surreal as openings led to being presented by the images of a large stone face. At the lower levels were a maze of passageways which were easy to get lost in.
We arrived in Siem Reap late in the evening, and had an early night ready for a day of exploring the Angkor Wat temples. We stayed at the lovely Angkor Secret Garden Hotel, where we also hired bikes for $2 a day. Angkor Wat is roughly 7km North of Siem Reap and took us about forty minutes to cycle there one way. At the entrance, we purchased a three-day ticket and headed towards the beautiful Angkor Wat, which was met first once inside the complex.
It was unexpected how large the complex was, particularly the outer surrounding moat, it was also unexpected how many people were there. We wandered to the north-side of the temple, trying to keep away from the tourists entering from the central main entrance. We explored the north flanking library and walked past the water lily filled Reflecting Pond towards the entrance.
We entered the temple’s first level, which present us with a cruciform shaped cloister, known as the ‘Hall of a Thousand Gods’. We explored the inner libraries which were surrounded by lush green grass. We climbed higher into the second level, which featured stone window pillars surrounding the inner gallery called the Bakan. These stone pillars, look like they have been carved on a lathe, and are supposed to mimic wood, which I totally agreed they did.
There was a long queue snaking around the edge of the Bakan for entrance to the inner gallery, after a little under an hour, we reached the eastern stairs. We climbed the steep sloped stairs, which represent the ‘difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods’. At the top were beautiful views of the jungle that surrounded Angkor Wat’s perimeter, right in the centre was the Angkor Wat central spire.
Back on the first level we navigated the outer perimeter of the inner bas-relief friezes, highlights included Heaven and Hell, Battle of the Gods, Procession of Suryavarman II and of course Churning of the Sea of Milk.
We left Angkor Wat, though not the last visit, on our bikes towards Angkor Thom.
A little out of Phnom Penh on the way to Siem Reap is the small rest-stop city of Skuon. There is a particular snack that Skuon is famous for, deep fried tarantula, which gives the city its nickname of Spiderville. Piled up on a plate between some kind of fried beetle and what I think is quail, was deep fried tarantula. Naturally, I purchased one and stored it in my backpack to try when I got back to the hotel. Sonya was not impressed.
It did take a lot of courage to eat it, even though it was clearly dead, my body seemed to naturally resist eating it. The legs and body was quite crunchy, the flavour masked by the chilli spice-mix. The abdomen was slightly soft and more difficult to swallow, not helped by the idea of eating the spider’s insides.
Prior to our bus ride to Siem Reap, we decided to visit one of the sorrowing relics from Cambodia’s painful history. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, formally a high-school, was converted to infamous Security Prison 21 during the Khmer Rouge rule.
The compound was disheartening and eerie, barred window rooms barely touched since their use, a single bed with iron shackles used to constrain the prisoners. Some rooms still had blood stained floors with even footprints visible.
Building B was quite emotional, a photo collage of the hundreds of men and women who were sent to Security Prison 21. Pol Pot was very detailed with documentation , for all prisoners who arrived at the prison, photos were taken of them. Some of the people were even photographed smiling, unaware of the horrors that they would be witness to.
Out of buildings B, C and D, building C was the only one left untouched to preserve the initial prison design. Barbed wire remains around the ground floor, stopped anyone from trying to escape, the large rooms were converted into tiny cells, less than a metre squared. The upper levels were the same, though this time separated by wood, a decision probably made due to the floor height already making it difficult to escape.
The last builder, D, was the most chilling, with sections of instrumentation used for torturing the prisoners. Two water torture apparatus can be seen, one used for water-boarding, and the other for water submersion. One of the final rooms housed a number of skulls of the victims.
At the entrance was a list of “The Security of Regulation”