Cambodia III - Revenge of the Strangler Fig

This was our final day touring temples.  The pictures are in reverse order so this blog entry begins where we finished at Beng Mealea.  Beng Mealea is what the Cambodian people named this temple after they "discovered" it again.  The original name has been forgotten.  Beng Mealea means the flower of the mahogany tree.  There were a lot of mahogany trees in the area and it seemed to fit.  Evidiently, this temple was one of the hiding places for Pol Pot in the 1990's.  It has been opened up for tourists for the past ten years but there isn't any restoration projects happening at this time.  

As you can see from the pictures, there are a lot of rocks strewn about. This isn't because someone came and tried to rebuild it.  It is the work of an invasive species of tree  called the 'Strangler Fig'.  Evenn though this temple had been clear cut 10 years ago, the strangler fig is taking over and breaking apart the sandstone rocks.  The rocks then fall to the ground in ruins.  I think it looks very picturesque.

The strangler fig in action.

This carving of Hydra has five heads.  They represent the four elements plus one, the sky.  According to our guide, carvings of Hydra will always been in an odd number and represent something, three heads are for the three main Hindu gods, Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma.  Five Hydra heads for earth, wind, fire, earth, and sky.  Seven Hydra heads would represent all the colors of the rainbow.  This carvinng had the most detail out of all of the Hydra carvings we saw during our three day tour.  Believe me, we saw a lot of Hydra carvings.

This was a bee Jeff found in the bathroom.  It was huge.  There have been several big bee hives on the temples.

Our tour started with a trip to Tonle Sap lake to see the floating fishing village.  This is a picture of the houses.  They are built on stilts to make accomodation for the changing water levels.  It is currently, the  dry season.  

Little kids were everywhere in the village.  They kept themselves entertained by captaining their own boats. 

This was a floating school.  It was donated by a Vietnamese company.  

Even though these floating houses were on a river in rural Cambodia, they had battery power and a satilite dish.  Priorities, right?  I also got a back massage, which was a series of hits on my back from the co-captain of the ship, who may have reached the old age of 10.  I kept trying to get Jeff's attention to say,"pay him, so he stops!" but it was too nosiy for him to hear.  Super akward!  It ranks right up there with the massage I had in Hawaii in which an India wedding party walked through.  

More examples of the houses and daily life of the people living here.  This is as far out as they bring these homes, the non-stilted ones.  In the rainy season the 3m lake rises to 12m and they float the whole village towards the stilted village.

This is a picture of the steering device that was used on the boat.  It was a rope connected to the steering wheel and the rudder.  

This was the "dock" that changes positions depending on the level of water in the river.  Right now, it is the dry season, so the water was low.  In the rainy season, the water level is much higher, it covers the slits of the houses.  Everything is built to move with the ebb and flow of the water.  These peoples lives revolve around the water.  Our boat trip was $40 for both of us.  Each set of tourists got their own boat.  At first, I didn't understand why, there was room enough for the other tourists in our boat. Then, our guide told us that the boat captains may only take out one boat a day.  This means that the men working here are getting paid a lot more than their counterparts in the fishing village.  

I've been having an internal debate about responsible tourism on this trip.  Where we being responsible tourists taking a huge boat up a river with three people on it to gawk at these peoples lives? No.  Where we helping these people make a more profitable living? Yes.  In the end, I guess it is about balance.    At any rate, we have concluded the guided tour portion of this trip. The rest of the trip will be at our lesiure.  I have several things I want to do and see still in Siem Reap. Stay tuned.

Cambodia II

Coming in from the airport the other day was odd.  It is down a long nice road that is flanked by 4 star hotels.  We are staying on this road.  Yesterday, we turned off this road and were on our way to the temples instantly.  Never thought we'd see Siem Reap unless we went downtown on purpose.  We went down towards downtown for dinner tonight.  Siem Reap is nice and not at all the 'wild west' I had been told it was.

You didn't come  here to read, so what pictures did we take today?

Nearly there, just one more day.  These pictures are in reverse order of our day.  The first temple is a mix of brick and stone, Hindu.  It is much smaller, in entire size and the structures themselves.  The carvings are very deep, some are almost full 'statues' with only their backs still intact, touching the structure stone that they were carved from.

The pillars are similar to those at all the other temples.  Here though, we got an sense of Greek and Roman architecture as well.  Ancient Aliens are obviously the only answer to any minute similarties.

Looks like the Balinese demon I had over my door for many many years.  The demons in Hindu temples are way cooler than the good guys (except for Hanuman).

This temple was built a few hundred years before Wat and Thom (if we are recalling our tour facts correctly).  The carvings are so deep and still stand out beautifully.  Most of the carvings on all the other temples are faded/fading with bits and bops that still stand out perfectly, this one had very little fading.

I love these two pictures together, but no, I'm too lazy to GIMP-them together (photoshop-them as you may know it).

This was a hard picture to get (the one on the right) and I had been taking the same picture at a lot of places.  The door ways to all the temples and cities (both Buddhist and Hindu) are oriented N/S/E/W with the doors built to give a mirror effect.  It does give the double mirror - fun house effect, in person it is rad, in photos it is so-so.

Faded Buddha faces and a Mahogany(?) tree.  Now dim the lights and wonder, is it safe or are the ancient spirits lurking?

Neak Pean, a man-made island was the center piece for a hospital.  There are four 'fountains' at each direction, each with their own 7m by 7m pool.  In the past (obviously) there were fortune tellers who would analize your astrological signs and health issues, then they would give you prayers to say and direct you to which pool's holy water you needed to bathe in....you stood in the center pool and the water from the selected pool was showered on you.  But wait, there is more, the four elements, earth, wind, fire and water are vital to this process.  Each pool represents a different element which will aid in your healing.  Three times a day you would have your holy shower.  The shower spout is the cool part.  A different animal represents each element and to be blessed, the water needs to flow through the skull of each animal: horse, elephant, lion, and human.  Sure, the skin, brains, lips and tounge are gone, but a human head as a shower spout isn't how I want to heal myself.

I love National Geographic's pictures.  I highly suggest checking them out, my pictures are lovely representations of my time here.  I also travelled light and took the pictures on my phone.  This guy was not the only person to lug a tripod and big camera up here but he was bested by the camo covered 12 inch lense we saw at the Angkor Wat sunrise.

The red lichen adds a great element to the walls.

This temple (last few pictures, next few) was built by Jayavarman VII  for his wife.  He was the 'builder king' who built most of the temples, well, nicely asked a few million people to build them.  After his wife died he married her older sister.  The wife's relief image still has flowers and incense brought to it each day.  Above is the relief of wife II, to get to it you have to duck down and climb over some fallen stones, I got that little taste of discovery as no other tourists were down where we were....for those five minutes.

 

These were little Buddhist meditation rooms.  They have two small rooms within each free standing structure.  The first 2m by 2m room is empty and the second has a water basin or phalic and yonic symbols, I couldn't tell which.

 This started as a Buddhist temple, but was psuedo-converted to a Hindu temple.  The Buddha carvings were almost all removed leaving a blank spot where they were.  It reminds me of the history channel's x-ray images of the Shroud of Turin, like a ghostly Buddha had disolved back into the stone.