Temples of Angkor

Today was my third and last day of in-depht-visit of the temples of the Angkor-area. The Angkor period lasted for more than 600 years between 802 and 1432, with the "golden era" under "god-kings" Suryavarman II (1112-52) and Jayavarman VII (1181-1219). who built the most famous temples Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. At that time, the Khmer empire was hinduist and the temples are all symbolisms of mythical Mount Meru (most temples have mountainlike structures). In a fascinatingly rich decoration, the temples tell stories of Hindu gods Shiva and Vishnu. Only between the 13th and 14th century Buddhism arrived to Cambodia and slowly replaced Hinduism. Today, Cambodian Buddhism still integrates however many elements of hinduism.

I visited the temples partly walking, partly on a motorbike and partly on a tuktuk. This morning I actually started at 5h50 in order to see the sunrise over the lake of one of the temples. Beautiful!! Yesterday I watched the sunset over the main temple of Angkor Wat. The rest of the day, I just strolled from one temple to the next, admiring different styles and shapes in changing lights. I especially liked the late afternoon sun which makes the reddish coulour of some of the stones even more intense.

Kids run around all over the place and try to sell all kind of things: postcards, guide books, flutes, scarves, etc or they try to "invite" you to the family run foodstand. It is sometimes really annoying, but sometimes the kids forget about selling their stuff and they are just kids rather than merchants. They know an amazing variety of key words in many languages and some of them speak English quite well. So it is easy to communicate with them. From time to time, I took a moment to speak to them, or play with them. On the second day, I was reading my guidebook and two little boys came along, curiously looking at my books. They saw that there were photos in there, so we started looking at them and were all fascinated. This is quite strange as I bought one of the books from on of the kids on the first day, but they are wrapped in plastic foil and it seems that the kids never looked in the book before... I learned that there is a hierarchy among the kids. Those running around within the enclosures of the temples are the kids of the many guards, all other have to remain outside. Sometimes, the main occupatio of the guards seems to be to keep out the children of the other people in order for their children to have a better chance to sell their stuff. The kids outside beg you not to buy anything inside.

Another interesting experience was a policeman wanting to sell me his police-identity-medal (it was not a fake one..!) as a souvenir - for 10 dollars, since he needed money.

Some of he temples are overgrown by the jungle and several of them have huge trees growing on their walls which is quite impressive.

Tomorrow, I will take the boat to Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh. It will take all day and we will stop at several "floating"villages on the way.

TRAVELLING ALONE

It was really stupid that I had worried before leaving that I might be lonely on my trip: travelling alone is finally really easy and I really like it: no discussions about what to do next or to which retaurant or guesthouse to go. If there is a problem, nobody you can make responsible for except yourself. I experienced - from the distance - quite some "interesting" situations, where people were shouting at each other for really stupid reasons. I met lots of people along the way, with some I had just a nice conversation, with some a drink or a dinner. With others I walked around a whole day. People here are also extremely open, especially if they realise that you travel alone. Actually, I mostly meet couples: a very nice french couple (wondering why somebody so "nice and charming" (I wonder why they did not say "goodlooking though.." ;-) ) was a single travelling alone. I can only wonder myself !!! Two Belgian couples, many (no, LOTS OF) Germans, a Danish, an American girl...

Again I have to apologise that I cannot upload any pictures. This time it is not a problem of the camera, but rather that you cannot upload pictures as this would cost them extra, as they have to pay their provider per MB of data transferred. So the computers generally have no CD-rom drive.. I tried quite a lot of different internet cafes... I hope that it will be possible in Phnom Penh.

It is already 23H00 here and I really need to go back and sleep as my boat will leave tomorrowq morning at 7, which means getting up at 6h00!! Again !!! :-(