Temple Ruins, Weddings, and Rain

Today, we visited a couple of very ancient Khmer empire temples that for two reasons few tourists go to. Reason #1 - they are far from town and most tours only spend 1-2 days in Siem Reap and don't have the time to travel there. Reason #2 - they are still in an area being cleared of land mines by multi-national teams. Don't worry, the fields cleared of land mines are clearly marked, and so are those areas you should stay out of.

First, we traveled to Koh Ker - a collection of many temples that served as capital of the Khmer empire in the 10th century. Many of the temples are still in their original, unrestored state. Chanra and I climbed to the top of the tallest temple.

From the top, you can see the Thai and Laotian border. The Khmer knew where to build - it is a beautiful site with distant views. How they got the stones to this site to build the temples is still a partial mystery. Some stones were cut from the nearby river beds, but many came from the mountains miles away.

Probably a combination of slave labor and elephants did the work. Even so, they were great architects and construction engineers for their time.



Then we went to Beng Mealea, a complex of 11th century temples still partially overgrown by the jungle. Many Khmer historians believe this complex was a model for building the more famous Angkor Wat. The design is very similar.
Unfortunately, many of these remote temples have been victims of looting. In Bangkok, we visited many shops that were selling huge objects of sandstone that were obviously pilfered from the temples in Cambodia and Burma.


This is supposedly the dry season and cool time of year in Cambodia. You'd never know. It is hot and humid - definitely a three shower a day city. Today, it rained as we headed back to town. The rain actually cools things off for a few minutes.

This time of year, a lot of Cambodians schedule their weddings. It's treated like June in the U.S.. Our friend Chanra is attending a friend's wedding tomorrow (and Wednesday). Weddings here last for more than one day and typically are attended by 500-2,000 people, depending on the size of the village and family.

We were going to go back to Angkor Wat today and meet with an archeologist for a private tour, but we cancelled due to the rain. The upper levels of Angkor Wat have been closed to tourists since our trip last year because it was deemed to be too dangerous and it was damaging the temple. Look back at our blog from March 2006 and see how steep the steps are at Angkor Wat.

Tonight, we are taking Chanra's family to dinner at the restaurant of their choice. We'll let you know where they chose.