Tomb Raiding

After a very early morning, we flew from the capital of Laos to Siem Reap to begin our Holiday in Cambodia. We arrived at our guesthouse, Angkor Wonder, run by two awesome Cambodian friends who spoke great English, were extremely friendly, and gave us the biggest room we have had all trip for a grand total of $7. While Cambodia’s official currency is the riel, trading at 4000 riel to 1 USD, most purchases of more than a dollar are done in American currency.

We wasted no time in getting to Siem Reap’s ancient temples by tuktuk with our new favorite driver, Myce. He started us off at Angkor Wat, meaning City Temple, not only because it was the main temple of the city of Siem Reap, but also because the temple itself was large enough to be a city. We climbed through, admiring the ancient bass reliefs that stretched for 600 meters around the perimeter. We explored it for hours, peaking into each nook and cranny, admiring the scale of the temple and the incredible detail of each statue and carving. When we were ready to move on to the next temple, we simply stepped outside of Angkor Wat and Myce appeared from out of nowhere, to take us on to Angkor Thom.

After many more awesome temples, we arrived at our last temple, Angkor Thom, sometimes called the Tomb Raider temple, because it was the setting of the Angelina Jolie movie “Tomb Raider.” Angkor Wat was unsurpassable in terms of beauty and sheer magnificence, but when it came to adventure, I much preferred Angkor Thom. We wandered through the tomb and never went under the ropes that sectioned off the forbidden areas, but we soon ended up somewhere we knew we weren’t supposed to be. We were climbing over rubble of the crumbling temple and through tree roots without any tourists in sight. Then, an old Cambodian man appeared from the shadows and beckoned us to follow him. We turned and looked at each other, feeling a little bit apprehensive about this stranger, but we had a good feeling about him so wen followed him. He didn’t speak any English but he led us through the temple to more secret places within the temple. He showed us awesome trees and secret connecting passages. He took us into one small room and beat his chest once with his closed fist and the sound reverberated and was amplified throughout the whole room. He showed us that doing this seven times in the certain spot that produced the echo was good luck, so we followed suit. At the end of his awesome mini tour, we got a picture with him and thanked him for an awesome time. We stepped out of Angkor Thom and of course Myce had us in his tuktuk in a matter of seconds, as he took us back to the less touristy back entrance to Angkor Wat where we watched one of the most memorable sunsets of my life.

That night we really wanted a good feel Cambodian cuisine and Myce knew just the place. For just a few bucks, we had all you can eat self-cooked Cambodian barbeque. There was a small charcoal heat source in the middle of our table, covered by a metal dish that contained hot water on the outside and a raised part in the middle to cook meat. We mixed in vegetables, tofu, all sorts of meat, lots of noodles, and of course a plethora of Cambodian spices and sauces, to create some scrumptious Cambodian barbeque soup. After a complimentary sip of snake whiskey (trust me, a sip is all you are going to want to drink) and a nice walk home, the five of us cuddled up and watched Tomb Raider the movie, pointing out all the places we had been.

Sadly, Friday was our last full day in Asia. We spent it going out on a boat to see a really interesting “floating village” that was completely built on stilts above water. We saw people rowing their way to the one temple in the town, clusters of boats with fruits and vegetables for sale, and even an isolated floating school that could only be reached by boat (or quite a swim!). We went on past the river village into the lake where we swam and enjoyed the warm Asian water one last time, imagining the frigid temperature of any water in North Carolina in December.

From Siem Reap we took a six-hour bus on to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Phnom Penh is definitely the biggest city we visited in our three weeks in Asia. There were big office buildings, almost everything was priced in dollars, and things were a bit more expensive than they had been in Laos or Thailand. We decided it was a good way to prepare us for our imminent return to America. We got in late that night so we happily settled for ice cream and pizza for dinner. We stayed up late reminiscing about the trip, sad that it was about to come to a close.

On Saturday morning we took a tuktuk out to a depressing yet historically significant part of Cambodia’s history: Choeung Ek, also know as “The Killing Fields.” In 1975, Pol Pot, a communist dictator, came into power. He eradicated the monetary system, outlawed any personal possessions, and demanded a tripling of rice production. Pol Pot ordered a mass execution of any intellectuals, professionals, and anyone who wasn’t a farmer. From 1975 to 1979, 1.3 million people were executed, and many more died from disease and starvation during the tyrannical rule. I couldn’t believe that this tragedy had happened, and that I had never learned about it in history class or even heard about it. While it was a morbid way to spend our last morning, the fields were a very moving place and I’m glad we learned their significance.

On a less somber note, we moved on to Phnom Penh’s huge markets, where we shopped around and enjoyed some awesome, and awesomely cheap, noodles. We wandered further to see Wat Phnom, the huge temple built in 1363 that the city was named after. As it got darker and closer to time to leave, the five of us made it to the night market to enjoy one last meal together. Charlie, Jimmy, and I had a flight out that night while Claudia and Sibel were staying for another 10 days of their Asian adventure. We said our sad goodbyes and we were off, homeward bound.