Our last day in Cambodia finds us with another relatively early start (for people on vacation) as we have a few things left on our list to see and need to get back to the airport by 2pm for our flight back to Thailand.

As usual our guide Theoun is already waiting for us when we come out of the breakfast area, and after loading what seems like more baggage than we arrived with, it is off to our last set of temples.  Today we will go to a group of 3 temples in the Roluos group – Lolei, Bakong, and Preah Ko.  These temples were built about 50km south-east of the main Angkor complex and are much closer to the Tonle Sap (more on that later).  At some point the king realized that the area was prone to flooding and the king relocated the capital to the Angkor area and started building his new temples there.  The main Angkor complex is a tough act to follow and these temples are not nearly as big and impressive as what we have already seen (sort of like looking at the original smaller pyramids after seeing The Great Pyramid first) but given that they were built in the 800s it is still a little inspiring to see what people made by hand over 1200 years ago – some of them like Bakong are still in quite good shape, and it is hard to image that they have lasted that long.

As an aside, after seeing all of these temples I have decided that I would quite fancy having a moat – I have requested to the gardener to get started on one as soon as we get home, so that I can have some crocodiles delivered before the rainy season begins back home 🙂

The final items on our list for Cambodia before heading back to the airport is to visit the Tonlé Sap and one of the floating villages.  The Tonlé Sap is a lake that most of the year is long and narrow (a few km wide and about 100km long), but fairly shallow (around 1 meter) and flows into the Mekong River and into the Pacific Ocean.  During the rainy season though the Mekong actually has such a high water volume that it over flows backwards into the Tonlé Sap and the lake expands dramatically to about 35km wide and almost 150km long and it’s depth increases by about 10x to around 10 meters.  The lake floods out the fairly flat country side and at it’s peak covers around 16,000 square km (around 6100 square miles)!!  The flooding creates a unique farming environment and they can harvest 3 crops per year from the well fertilized soil. Additionally, the flooded area provides a great spawning area for fish, and during the high season tons of fish are caught as one of the area’s major food sources.

A unique side effect of the expansion and shrinking of the lake is the existence of the ‘floating villages’ around the lake area.  Technically they are not floating, but are actually all built on high stilts over 20 feet off the ground.  Most of the year the ground below is dry and the houses and buildings are just raised up off the ground.  There is a ‘main street’ and people walking about, gardens growing, etc. but when the lake floods the entire village is suspended above the water by the stilts and the only means of moving about is by boat.  All the items that are on the ground are either moved up into the house, or are moved out by the road before the waters get too high.  At the time of our visit the village is not yet flooded, but our guide informs us that the water is rising at a rate of about 5cm per day (about 2 inches)!

We drive in from the main road about 1/2 way to the village where we board a longtail boat to go out to where the village is and then out onto the lake itself.  The lake was impressive and has already flooded enough that we cannot see the other side, and as we are going down the river from where we started we can see areas where the forest floor is now covered in water.  On the way back in from the lake our boat stops at the main pagoda for the village and we are able to get out and walk around.  It is a bit of a surreal experience to walk down the street and have to look up at all the buildings, but aside from that it is mostly a regular village, there are homes, merchants, and we even spot a barber chair at one building.  Near and dear to Mrs Columbus’ heart is a walk by the local primary school where dozens of young children are laughing and playing – it seems that we have wandered by during recess and the children are just hanging about in their classrooms.  Our guide tells us that it is OK to go have a look inside and even takes us into a couple of the rooms.  The little Cambodian faces are all smiles and the kids are waving at us, just excited to see some foreign faces.  The experience is a little moving, and we stop to buy some notebooks for the teacher to distribute to the kids in one of the classrooms before we head back to our boat to go home.

A quick trip back to Siem Reap for lunch and then our driver takes us back to the airport to checkin for our flight back to Thailand and the next part of our journey.  I definitely think that there is much more to see in Cambodia and I hope to be able to come back in the near future to explore some other parts of the country as we have barely even scratched the surface.  The people we interacted with were incredible and we are continually reminded of how happy people can be with so little that we are leaving a little humbled inside.

Our return flight is uneventful, and we are greeted in Bangkok by a taxi driver that we have used before.  We were able to call him from Cambodia and arrange for him to take us to Kanchanaburi which is our next destination.  The trip is about 3 hours, but we hit the Bangkok traffic at the end of the work day so that adds another hour to our drive time, by the time we get to our hotel we are all ready for a quick bite to eat and then some quality sleep time.

I don’t normally like to take pictures where the main subject is people.  It is mostly in my head, but I think that trying to capture the perfect ‘image’ of a person is something I need more practice with.  I have taken some portraits that I am proud of, but it still feels like something outside of my comfort zone.

That said, it is certainly much easier to take pictures of people that are so photogenic!  I must say that I am glad that there are rules about smuggling people inside of luggage as I fear that Mrs Columbus would have taken as many of these home with her as her baggage allowance would have permitted:

Not that we are complaining, because we are actually very blessed with what we have – even if they are sometimes a little sketchy looking 😉

On day 2 of our Angkor adventure Mrs Columbus and I roust our teenage companions for a very early 5am start on the day.  In doing the planning for our short time here almost all the comments I saw indicated that a sunrise or sunset (or both) at one of the temple sights was an absolute must, so we asked our guide to include one in our travels.  Given that we are here in the off season we unfortunately have to work around the potential of rain so that basically eliminates the sunset option as we would have to take a 40 min hike up a rise to see the view and sunset from the top.  The rains most often come in the evening, so we decide that the chance of having to hike up and down (the down part in the semi-dark) while being rained upon suggests that we are better off focusing on the sunrise option.  The skies can be mixed cloud most of the day so there is a chance the sunrise will not be as spectacular as we see in the photos, but we set off in the morning to see what the day will bring.

We have chosen to go to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise as we can get a good view over the moat with the temples in the background and a nice reflection off the water if all the conditions co-operate.  Unfortunately the last bit did not work out as well as we had hoped, and the overcast skies blocked out most of the sunrise itself.  However we still did get some nice photos and I have to say that the serenity of the moment was more than I expected.  We managed to set ourselves down on the outer wall to the left of the main causeway that crosses the moat, and there were no people around us at all.  We had a light snack for breakfast and watched as the sunlight came in.  The water in the moat was perfectly flat and you could hear the just the sounds of the jungle – it is difficult to describe, but extremely peaceful.

After the sunrise we jumped back in the car to start out to our next destination.  I had read about a company that offers a tethered balloon ride near the temple that allows you to see the park area from the air, and asked our guide about it.  It was very close to where we were, so we decided to check it out.  It was still early in the day and  before most of the bus tours start up, so there was no-one there but us, and they were able to take us up right away.  The balloon took us up about 150 meters (about 500 feet) and we had an impressive view of the main temple but also of the surrounding area and some of the spots we had been to yesterday.  It is hard to understand why these sites were lost to the jungle over the centuries when you are standing in them because they are truly massive, and you think how could something this size get ‘lost’, but from the air it is a little easier to understand how dense the jungle can get, and some of the temples we saw in the first day barely show through the ground cover and canopy when viewed from above.  All in all a great stop and we are very happy we chanced upon it.

Our next stops include the temples of Banteay Srei, Banteay Samré, East Mebon, Pre Rup, Ta Som, Neak Pean, and finally Preah Khan. Towards the end of stop at Preah Khan the weather catches up with us and a short cloud burst of about 20 mins opens up and we wait it out inside the temple.  When the rain lets up we decide to wrap it up for the day as we are a little tired and don’t want to chance getting caught in a bigger storm, but it is a little unfortunate as I think the temple was quite interesting and there was more we could have explored.

We have been fairly fortunate all day though as the route we took seems to be even more offset from the bus tours than our schedule yesterday and the number of other tourists we have to share the temples with is quite small all things considered.  These sites all seem to have an extra sense of grandeur when they are not full of people.

Our guide Theoun has co-ordinated some discounted tickets for a dinner show that is right across the street form our hotel, so we finish out the evening with a buffet of various Cambodian and SE Asian food, and a display of traditional Cambodian dancing.  Tomorrow is our last day here and we have a few things left on our list to see, so we set a start time of 7am with our driver and it is the end of another busy day.

Today is the start of our big adventure to explore the Angkor complex.  Most foreigners refer to the site as Angkor Wat, but as we have come to find out Angkor Wat is only a single temple in a complex that consists of over 50 different temples and ruins.  Given our limited time we (like most people) have only been able to choose a handful of the more well known spots to explore over 3 days.

We have done a fair amount of research in advance about what the highlights are and have also hired a driver / guide named Theoun who came recommended to us.  I am really happy that we arranged this in advance because we were able to get started straight away without having to try and pick someone once we got here, or worse to try and just do it on our own.

Our first day out we are going to start at 8am and do what they refer to as the ‘small circuit’.  We are actually going to go backwards around the circuit as our guide informs us that we will be going opposite to the large tour buses that we see as we are entering the park.  I am thinking that this is a good thing because the one thing that really puts a damper on this sort of adventure for me is mobs of tourists.  I know this is a little ironic sounding, but I like to be able to step into the space and try to imagine what it was really like when it was built, or the way it was when it was discovered.

I have to admit that all of the reading and internet research that I did before we left only marginally prepared me for what I was about to experience…  The pictures will give some impression of what we are seeing, but there is no way a simple photo can reflect the magnificence these sites deserve.

Our first day includes the sites: Prasat Kravan, Banteay Kdei, Ta Prohm, the city of Angkor Thom, and then Angkor Wat.  Ta Prohm is a temple that many people may recognize scenes from as it was used as a location for the Tomb Raider movie.  As was the case with all the temples in this area, they were abandoned around the 14th century and the jungle has now had several hundred years to dominate the land, the result is that up until the early 1900s the sites were completely overgrown with vegetation. There is restoration work being undertaken at most of the temples, but for some like Ta Prohm they are quite concerned about removing the trees because in some places the gigantic tree roots are all that continue to hold the structures up so there is some forced co-existence with man and nature.

Angkor Thom was actually a huge city and the center of the region.  Many of the temples were built inside the walls of the city, and historians estimate that during it’s height in the 1300s over 1 million people lived there.  It is staggering to image that many people living in a ‘city’ without all of our modern infrastructure, but when you stand at some of the temple sites and are dwarfed by the construction you realize that it would have taken that many people to build these monuments without any modern tools / equipment.

Angkor Wat is the most fully restored of the ruins that we will see, and is the calling card of the region.  The temple area is surrounded by an outer wall that encloses the full area of the compound of over 200 acres!!  Inside the outer wall is the distinctive moat that is seen in most pictures – the moat is 190m meters across (almost the length of 2 football fields) and several meters deep, and was completely excavated by hand.  Despite the centuries of conflict in Cambodia’s history the temple was discovered in quite condition and ongoing restoration work has turned it into the spectacle that we end out our day with.

We will have lots of great stores to tell when we get back, and lots more photos to share, but hopefully the ones I was able to upload here will give you a taste of what we are experiencing.  Tomorrow it is an early start at 5am to try and catch the sunrise over Angkor Wat and then ‘the grand loop’ for our 2nd day.