Angkor - the Second (Day 121 of World Trip)

01/03/2020

This is slowly becoming the sleep quality blog :p :D :D

But, you can say it was the best night in a long time! :) Went to bed around 10 PM and only woke up for a few minutes when roommates came in or out. But they were always really quiet and careful with the lights, so overall you could sleep perfectly! Yay! ;-)

After the chocolate spread breakfast, we went back to the Indian place where we waited for our bus. Today was the "big tour" through the temple complex. It's called that because you go to temples that are a bit further away from Angkor Wat itself :)

We had briefly hoped that there wouldn't be sooo many people there, but then we wondered how many people would book this second tour and during the day we were confirmed: No, you don't "escape" the crowds ^^

Shortly after 8:00 AM, our tour guide for the day picked us up on time. He looked really young, maybe max 20 years old, and seemed a bit less fun than our guide from yesterday. He didn't call us "my family" but greeted us without any "entertainment" ;-)

Collecting everyone today took almost a whole hour but then we started. Most of us already had the temple pass but not everyone, so the first stop was the ticket office again. This suited me very well because I had to go to the toilet anyway :p

When we were all together and equipped with temple passes, we drove to the first temple - Banteay Sri, located 35 km from Angkor Wart.

The special thing about this temple is that it was not built by a king, but by one of his advisors. Actually, only the king had the right to build temples, but this advisor first worked for a king and then for the prince, his son. So, this second king finally allowed the construction.

The location of the temple was the settlement where this advisor grew up almost 1,000 years ago, and that also explains why it is not directly next to the others ;-) It is an exception because it was built by "ordinary" people.

I already talked a bit about temples for Buddhism, Hinduism, and the different eras yesterday, and much of it was repeated today - that means, Jonas and I were the "class nerds" today :p :D :D

The temple was quite nice but not a real highlight for me ;-) I liked others better but yes. You can always appreciate such ancient buildings :)

The second temple was Pre Rub, which became Jonas' favorite temple

Many parts of it are still original, so for example, the ceilings are missing or randomly arranged stones lie on the floor. It is still quite original and looks really cool!

Three different types of stones were used, so the walls have different colors in some places, and it is also impressive that one of the temples was built on two floors - on round pillars. Our guide said that this indicates that the Khmer people in the 11th/12th century had learned from Roman or Greek structures and thus oriented themselves on their pillars!

What I found great was that there were four-leaf clovers at a pond outside ;-)

In the center of the temple, there is a stupa in a former closed room. When the sun or the moon shone exactly through the small gap in the ceiling, it illuminated the otherwise black rooms. That must have looked pretty spectacular :)

After this temple, we visited the Neak Paon temple, which means "entwined snakes", so two snakes entwined with each other.

The special thing about this temple is that it is on an island - which was artificially created by piling up earth back then ;-)

The path there now leads over a bridge that offers a great view of the water, in which the surroundings are cool reflected when the water is calm.

The temple itself is rather small and is completely surrounded by water on a small island within the island. According to tradition, it was used as a "hospital". Sick people came there by boat, prayed and then bathed in the water to get well.

Actually, we wanted to visit a fourth temple before lunch but it was already 1:30 PM so we stopped for lunch. The stop was in the same restaurant as yesterday.

At the table, we sat with a Korean, a Chinese, and a Third Culture Kid :D He was born in Colombia, lived in Brazil, went to high school in the United States, and then moved back to Switzerland with his Swiss parents. He studied there and will study for his master's degree in Portugal or Brazil. So, he speaks fluent Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English. Interesting^^

After lunch, we went to a temple that is a bit similar to Ta Phrohm from yesterday. Its name is Ta Som and it is really in the jungle. Actually, it doesn't look any different from the other temples - although I find the slanted walls pretty cool. But a tree has grown on one of the entrance gates, whose roots have pushed through the masonry or wrapped around it. I really found that very beautiful.

Finally, we visited the temples East Merbon and Preah Khan, which looked a bit similar, but the latter has a significantly higher tower.

By now, we were a bit "temple-tired", but overall the second day in Angkor was definitely worth it!

Each temple has its own uniqueness and they are all really old, which makes them worth seeing alone ;-)

Whether we will still use the third day while we are in Siem Reap, I don't know. I think we've had enough for now^^

In general, the tour today was also great (although our tour guide wasn't quite as funny and sometimes talked and repeated things a bit too much :p) :)

We were back in the city center around 5:00 PM, had dinner, and then went back to the hostel.

The next two days will probably be quite calm again. We always have the pool to keep us occupied and we have to/want to plan our next destination

And then we still have to select a few of the over 500 photos from the last few days for the blog :D :D So, let's get to it ;-)