They arrived on Wednesday at 8am. We went out for lunch and introduced them to our favourite Cambodian meal, Char Kheung. After that we went to the War Museum where Sinath took us for a tour. Some information on Sinath and some photos are in an earlier post on our blog. We learned a few new things on the second tour. Sinath pointed out one vehicle and said that a Major General had been killed in there. He also mentioned that one of the tanks still had a skeleton in it that hadn't been removed. He gave us a rather gory account of how they had to clean remains out of destroyed tanks given that people would be boiled to death in the intense heat of a burning tank. We also learned that Sinath was lucky to be alive. When he was blind in both eyes and had lost a leg, the army planned on giving him a euthanasia injection (apparently standard practice in Cambodia in the civil war). A friend took him away from the "hospital" where he was to have the injection and he became a begger until a UN sponsored program took him to Thailand where he had sight restored in one eye. He jokes that he never saw Bangkok, but her certainly smelled it. His sight slowly returned when he got back to Cambodia.
The next day we all went to the temple complex doing the shorter one day tour which visits the main temples, but only visits about one third of the temples in the area.
We visited Angkor Wat, the most famous temple who's sheer size is just astounding. It has a moat around it and the dimensions of the wall surrounding it is 1300x1500 meters. It contains eight giant stone carved pictures which are about 3 meters high and 200 meters long depicting Hindu scenes. It could take most of a day to explore alone if you had the time.
Here is the view from near he centre of Angkor Wat out towards the wall and the main gate of the temple. You can see a balloon about to go up in the distance.
From Angkor Wat we went to Bayon which is famous for the many carved faces of a deity which face every direction. (coincidently, the deity's face closely resembles that of the king who built the temple).
From here it was a short walk to Baphoun.
If you walk off the beaten track, you can come across some lovely ruins slowly decaying in the jungle.
Nicole and Henny climbing up some stairs.
Other than Angkor Wat, probably the most famous temple is Ta Premh which was featured in the movie "Tomb Raider". This place really has a tremendous atmosphere to it and you get a feeling of what the early French explorers felt as they discovered these temples in the middle of the jungle. The temple has been overgrown with massive trees with impressive root systems running over and through the temple.
Bill and Henny between the roots of a tree growing over the temple.
You have to be careful in the jungle. We came across this huge snake.
Actually it was only 15cm long and we had to zoom in to photograph it
One of the last places we stopped was a swimming pool built for the private use of a king.
Stan, Nicole and Henny are enjoying sitting down for a spell.
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