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Day 24: 2/7/13
Happy Anniversary Mam and Dad! I hope ye are celebrating it somewhere nice today!
I'd only about 3 hours sleep last night as we had to leave at 4am this morning to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. The whole Angkor complex was built between the 9th and 12th century by various kings. They were hindu first and then buddhist so there are different influences in the buildings. It was still dark when we got there but the sun soon started rising over the Angkor Wat ruins. There's a moate around it so you could she the sunrise in the reflection too which was really cool. The only one problem was that there were hundreds of people there so there's a hand or a head in most of my photos!
We didn't go to Angkor Wat directly after sunrise as its always crowded, so we went to Ta Phrom. This temple is in ruins so its nice to see it sort or untouched. There are towers and walls around the temple with trees and grass growing around them- which adds to the effect. It felt like the set of an Indiana Jones film! In fact Angelina Jolie was here for part of the Lara Croft Tombraider films. It was built in 1186 and only took five years to build. Like most of the temples it was Hindu and then Buddhist. We wandered around for a bit looking at various sections. At one stage the guide pointed out a wall with carvings. Most of them were pictures of real life in Cambodia- how they hunt, cook, etc. One of them though was a stegosaurus. Noone knows how they knew about dinosaurs in 1186 or why it would be there when everything else was factual- it's a mystery!!
We went for breakfast then which was a big weird as it felt like the middle of the day at that stage!
We then went to the main temple- Angkor Wat. The word Angkor means capital and the word Wat means temple. Angkor was the capital city in the 9th century for the Khmer empire which encompassed parts of China, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and of course, all of Cambodia. Angkor Wat was built by king Jayavarman 7th. There were a lot of temples built by him. It was built between 1113 -1150. The French restored the building to what it looks like today. There's a moat all around it which helps to compact the soil so the building won't collapse. Any of the temples who's moats have dried up have collapsed. The lotus flower was important in the design of the temple. The towers are the same shape as the 9 towers on the building (the number nine is important in the building also as it's the number of provinces or something). On the building also there are carvings of the open lotus flowers, with 8 petals. The nine towers are in the same position as some constellation too- it sounded like she said drago constellation so I don't know what that is in our pronunciation! On the 23rd of March and 23rd of Septemeber, the equinoxes, the sun rises directly over the central tower- so obviously they knew a lot about astronomy too! It reminds me of the Incas. There is a central tower, with walls around it and four more towers and then further outside there are four more towers. I think there is supposed to be 4 miles of wall around it so its pretty big! It's almost exactly 1km from the central tower to the entrance- when it is measured they were only 1 centimetre out. We walked around the outside first and took some cool jumping photos. Then we walked around the inner towers where there are carvings on the walls. Some are shiny from people touching them. They show war scenes, the Weapons they used, martial art arts, boats, horses, food, etc. Some of them give an indication of real-life back then. Other ones represent stories from Hinduism and Buddhism. The carvings are seen now on plain stone walls but they would have been painted with red, black and gold lacquer so they would have been very picturesque. Inside the four inner towers there are pools that would have filled with rainwater. They would have resembled air, fire, water and earth. When people were sick they came to the temple to bathe in the pools and be healed. The central tower is in the middle of the four pools and there was a central spot that we could stand on. We climbed up a stairs to the upper level then and there are no carvings there. This part of the temple wasn't finished and Indians tried to help with the reconstruction and used the wrong materials to take off the moss and ending up getting rid of any carvings that were there. There were marks where there had obviously been statues. But there are none there now. Many were stolen or sold. The biggest collection of Cambodian statues is in the Louvre in Paris. We climbed up to the inner part of the temple. Here you had to cover your knees and shoulders to get in, but our guide had us warned. The steps up were crazy steep- thank God there was a railing for us! I don't know how they ever went up it without a railing! Up there you could see the towers better and you'd a good view out over the entrance. There were also Buddhas in lots of the towers.
When we came down from the upper part of the temple, we walked outside the complex back towards the entrance. We stopped at a place where there were toilets and where they had fresh coconut to but for a dollar. So we all got some as the water is supposed to be really good for you in the heat and we were all roasting. They cut off the top of the coconut and then just give you a straw so you can drink out of it. The coconuts are green and to export them they cut off the green part and the inside is brown. But I think we get other types of coconuts anyway as the ones I see in Tescos seem much smaller. That was my first time trying a coconut anyway and I didn't really like it. The water was really bitter although we all drank it as we were so hot anyway. They chopped it in half when you were finished drinking then so you could eat the flesh but it was really hard and didn't taste of much- it definitely didn't taste of what I would imagine a coconut to be like- any coconut we get in desserts or chocolates or anything must have a pile of sugar added!
We made our way back to the bus then and they drove us to the next temple. The bus stopped at an impressive bridge and entrance tower called Angkor Thom. We stopped there to walk across the bridge and take photos and then got back on the bus to the other temple. On the bridge there were statues of men in the shape of a tug of war competition. There's an ancient story behind it- something to do with a snake and bad spirits. A lot of the heads on the men are missing, especially on the side we saw after the temple. There was a little monkey there when we walked across the bridge which was really cute.
We went to Bayon temple then and that one has lots of towers with faces on them- 54 faces in total, which again was a number of areas in Cambodia or something. It's the newest temple, built between 1181 and 1220, but its one of the most destroyed. There's old writings from some Japanese person who described the temples and mentioned the temple with heads being gold, so they must have been gold at some stage. The Japanese are restoring it at the moment and you could see people working on it while we were there. There were lots of stones around the place- it was pretty dilapidated. There was a cool rainbow while we were there- it was a circle around the sun which the guide was calling a crown. It made good photos. My camera was dead by the time I got to that temple though and I was just using my iPhone. I charged it up last night but it didn't take too long to charge and it didn't seem to last too long today. So I don't know if the battery is dodgy or if I just overdid it today- I probably just took way too many photos! The carvings on this temple were pretty cool as they showed more of the way of life- fishing, pig-fighting, childbirth, chess- everything you can imagine!
We went back to the hostel then and had a little nap! We deserved it after being up at 3:30!! Some people went for a massage but we didn't want one so we lay quiet for a few hours. I didn't even sleep but laying quiet was enough to recover!
We went for dinner then. We didn't have a group dinner this evening. The guide had mentioned a place with traditional music and dancing so we went there. It was called Temple Club. It ended up that the people that had the massage went there too so we met them later on in the evening. We were starving as we had been so busy all day so we ordered spring rolls and dinner- I got a curry dish called Amok which was really good. It was like a Thai red curry but not half as spicy! Cambodian food traditionally isn't spicy. They don't seem to understand the idea of a starter though, even though they are written on the menu as appetisers! We for the spring rolls, the curry dish and the rice all together as well as water, pineapple juice and beer!! There weren't room for half the things!
The music started a little after we got the food. They had a drum, a xylophone, another instrument with the same idea as a xylophone but with metal circles that you hit that are spaces in a semi-circle around the musician. They had a clarinet kind of wooden instrument then which played the melody. It's kind of loud screechy music that would take a bit of getting used to! They did a dance after each instrumental piece. The first dance was a blessing dance and was just done by girls. They all wore make-up and had bright outfits on- trousers and tops. The dance is really slow- they walk with their knees bent and bum sticking out and do lots of movements with their hands- they bend back their fingers so it looks like they are all double-jointed! The stand on one leg a lot and bend their knees so their ankles stick out- an unusual pose. It looks really pretty though. The celestial dance they did later was a dance that they did for the kings once upon a time and that similar moves- those dances are almost like a dream sequence or something- you could imagine them putting a spell on you!
Most of the other dances had stories to tell- one had a devil character and a horse. It was like the dances in South America with the devil. There was a coconut dance which was good because they made a nice rhythm banging the coconuts together. There was a peacock dance where there were two boys in peacock costumes with the big feathers and everything and there was a fishing dance with boys and girls where the boys were taking the girls baskets and reason them- it's the same everywhere! There was really screechy singing on a tape while they were dancing- I wouldn't listen to too much of it, but it somehow suited the dancing! They brought the dancers on at the end and we could take photos with them so we were all up!
After dinner we went downstairs to the pub part of the restaurant. Some people were going to stay there dancing and others were going to the night markets so we went to the markets. There were lots of souvenirs, silk scarves, wide cotton trousers with the bright designed that everyone has these days and paintings of Angkor Wat. I had seen some paintings earlier in the day and liked them so I wanted to get some. I ended up liking two of them and I thought I'd just get the two. They wanted 29 first but I bargained down to 17. It took ages to get them then as they had to take them off the frame they were on and roll them up for me. We went past another stall with pictures later and the starting price for those pictures was 17, so I think they saw me coming!!
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