Angkor Wat

(or, and you thought there were a lot of pictures of the temples in Bangkok)

We left Bangkok on Tuesday morning, flying to Siem Riep to begin our visit to Angkor Wat. First, a little clarification: “wat” just means temple, but when people talk about seeing Angkor Wat, they usually mean both the big temple (Angkor Wat itself) and the rest of the surrounding temples which are often referenced by the same name, though they have their own names. There isn’t just one temple – in fact, there are far too many to see in one short visit. We saw nine temples total (Royal Palace, Terrace of the Elephants, Terrace of the Leper King, Bayon, Angkor Wat, Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Banteay Srei, and Banteay Samre), and we didn’t even scratch the surface.

The temples are built and carved out of stone (stone that was quarried about 80km away from where the temples were built - just think of the social organization required to make that happen and to sustain it over a period of several hundred years). The most striking thing about the temples is the ornate carvings that adorn all of them. Some of these carvings tell stories from various Indian and Southeast Asian epics and some are just pure decoration. But they are all beautiful and captivating. The temples were mostly carved by Hindu kings from the mid-900s to the mid-1200s, until Buddhist rulers took over and started to carve some of their own temples (see if you can guess which are which in our pictures below). One of the most interesting things about the temples is that in trying to outdo earlier rules, sometimes kings built new temples and sometimes kings just added onto or changed the design of existing temples, such that some temples were constantly under construction.

Now, however, there’s nothing going on there, except a lot of tourists (the country that sends the most visitors is South Korea). In fact, because Cambodia is so poor, the only real economy is the tourist economy, so visiting Cambodia is more expensive than visiting Thailand. On a related note, the most useful currency in Cambodia is the dollar, with the Thai baht running a very, very distant second. However, because there are no U.S. coins in circulation, the Cambodian riel fills that role – so you’d pay for 75 cent bottle of water with a dollar and get, like, 2000 riels back in bills. Mike and I both agreed that Cambodia was both the poorest place and the weakest state we’d ever visited.

Well, have I talked enough? Are you ready for the pictures?

First, detail shots of the carvings. Someday, I want to enlarge these and maybe frame them up as a series on a wall in my house.

And, now the temples themselves.well, that one was just on the road to the temples, but you get the idea ...All of the ones above are of the surrounding temples. Here are our Angkor Wat pictures.

At Angkor, we actually climbed to the very top of the temple. This was no easy task, as the stairs are really (truly!) frightfully steep. And you only got to use the railing on the descent.

The view from the top of the jungle was amazing and made it all worth it.Because we couldn't get enough of Angkor on high, we went up in a tethered hot air balloon to see it from above.Sunset, on our last day

And now for the practicalities. We stayed at a great guesthouse in Siem Riep, and our package there included our room, breakfast, lunch (which they packed in cooler and we enjoyed in the shadows of whatever temple we were visiting that day), and a tuk-tuk and driver. For the uninitiated, a tuk-tuk is like a rickshaw cart attached to a motorcycle. It is as popular as cars in Siem Riep. Our driver was named Mr. Hav, and he was very funny and nice.

Finally, in parting, a shot of the fruit market in Siem Riep.

Bangkok

Our whole trip was fabulous! What I’ve decided to do is make three posts about the three sections of our trip (Bangkok, Angkor Wat, and the beach). So, here goes the first one:

We arrived in Bangkok really, really late at night. We decided to take a cab to our hotel, since we’d read that cabs are very cheap. This was, indeed, true. A 30-minute cab ride from the airport cost about $8. What we didn’t count on was that our cab driver would have no clue where our hotel was. I had actually printed up the name of the hotel in Thai, plus a map that had Thai and English on it. At one point the cabbie actually had to get out of the cab and study the map using his headlights! Anyway, we got to the hotel. And, let me tell you, $36 in Bangkok buys you one nice hotel room. Seriously.

The next day (after the free and yummy breakfast – including mimosas!), we set out to see the city. First, we rode the skytrain/monorail to the big weekend market. I’d thought this would be awesome, but, really, it was just overwhelming. There are over 5,000 stalls there! We bought some sandals for Mike and a beach cover-up for me, and had some lunch there. I was a little nervous about eating the street food, but Mike couldn’t get enough!For the afternoon, we decided to hit two big temples in downtown Bangkok. First, we went to Wat Phra Kaew, the home of the Emerald Buddha (which is actually made of jade, go figure). This temple is amazing. I really feel like our pictures don’t capture how beautiful and shiny it was. It was just gold and blue and glittery everywhere one looked. And big. Really, really big.

Next, we went to Wat Pho, which is the home of the biggest Buddha in Bangkok. The Buddha is 153 feet long! I know our pictures don’t capture that (that's Mike by the toes of the Buddha, by the way)! The grounds of Wat Pho were nicer to stroll than those of Wat Phra Kaew, since Wat Pho was far less crowded.Our second day in Bangkok was the much-awaited cooking class (Mike’s birthday gift). First, the class took a market tour, and then we returned to the cooking school to start cooking!We were the only people signed up for the vegetarian cooking class, so we ended up basically having a private lesson. The class was really fun - this was definitely one of the best things we did on the whole trip! We made our own red and green curry paste (starting with pounding the chiles, which included learning which ingredients to pound in which order, so that the smashed chiles don't splash out into your eyes), green curry, red curry, green papaya salad, mushroom and coconut milk soup, and pomelo salad (pictures of just a few of the dishes are below).Mid-way through the course, we took a break to eat what we’d made so far – and it was spicy! At one point, I really felt like my lips were on fire. Then, a bit fatigued and sleepy from being so full, we went back upstairs and cooked some more. We actually made so much that we had to take the extra food back to our hotel for dinner (we eventually were hungry again, after spending the late afternoon swimming and resting beside the hotel’s pool)!

We have

arrived safely back in Tsukuba. We will be making many posts about our adventures soon.

Thailand and Cambodia

We have just finished a few days in Siem Reap, Cambodia, which is right near the ruins of the city of Angkor. It was abslutely beautiful. Now we are at the Bangkok airport, waiting to head to Koh Chang, Thailand, to spend some time no the beach. We will post plenty of pictures when we get back to Japan.

Mmm . . . . Mexican

So we had tacos (or tacos-su, as they might be called here) the other night.

We did not eat here (this place is in our neighborhood, but it always seems to be closed):Rather, we ate at home.This is Mike’s first Mexican food since August, and my second (since I ate some in Hong Kong).

Also, here’s a hat I made for Stephanie:
And here’s Mike on the swings at the playground near our house.
In other news, we are leaving tomorrow for our little adventure: we’ll be in Bangkok for a few days, then off to Cambodia and Angkor Wat, and then back to Thailand to hit the beach at Koh Chang (the Koh Chang on the Gulf of Thailand side, not the one on the Andaman Sea side). We’ll do our best to post and email, but I’m not sure if it will be possible or easy. Expect good pictures and stories when we return on the 16^th!