Our first stop at the Angkor complex yesterday morning was Banteay Srei, the Citadel of the Women, said to be so named because the extensive stone carvings are too intricate to be carved by the hand of a man.
Next, we stopped at Angkor Wat, the largest religious building in the world. We're going back there tomorrow so we'll post more pictures.
After lunch, we went into the temple complex of Angkor Thom. This is one of the 4 bridges and gates across the moat. The whole Angkor complex is immense. Angkor was a city of 1 million people when London was a town of 50,000. Khmers are very proud that they built Angkor but now after the Khmer Rouge, they're basically starting over. When you see what they've done in the past, you can have no doubt that they will progress very quickly from a very poor country right now into a much brighter future.
This is the Bayon, just one of the temples inside Angkor Thom.
There are 216 huge faces staring down at the Bayon.
More faces. Everything at the Bayon is very solid, huge and somewhat surreal.
Anita is trying to bend her fingers back like the traditional Khmer Apsara dancers in the stone carving.
This is the temple of Ta Prohm, the so-called Tomb Raider temple. The movie, featuring Angelina Jolie was filmed here. In the picture are me, Anita, Tim and his Thai friend Dao (sp?) who was here with some Thai professors on a bus tour.
Ta Prohm.
The Bayon from a distance.
After a shower and short rest at the hotel, Tim, Dao, Anita and I went to a buffet dinner and traditional Apsara dance performance downtown. Very different dancing - slow, controlled and lots of hand movements with fingers bent backwards. Great show.
Here we are getting our pictures taken onstage with some of the performers after the show.
This morning, Tim and Mike went back to Phnom Penh in our rented van with driver. We'll miss them. Tim has been a fantastic host, showing us things and taking us places that we otherwise would not have seen. We've had a great time with him, Mike and Ernie. We're always joking that we shouldn't say too much about how nice it is in Cambodia and how friendly the people are (with a few exceptions). Before he left home, someone told Ernie Perrier that "They'll steal your money and then slit your throat". That's been one of our recurring jokes. We've been thinking we should keep telling people that so that we can keep this beautiful country to ourselves.
After Tim and Mike left, we went to a travel agent in town and reserved a taxi Friday morning to drive us to the border at Poipet and another to drive us from the Thai border to Bangkok airport (total cost $130 for a 6 hour drive). Then we fly south to the island of Ko Samui in the Gulf of Thailand for some rest (haha). We're staying there at a beach resort to celebrate Anita's birthday (February 6th) for a week before flying back to Bangkok.
Tonight we're going downtown by tuk tuk ($2) for dinner. Tomorrow morning we're going to rent a tuk tuk for the day ($20) to drive us all around the Angkor temples to spend some time in places we may have missed. We didn't stay long in Angkor Wat so we'll be sure to go back there for a couple of hours.
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