Just another hot and sweaty day in Cambodia ... Except today is St Patrick's Day!!!!!
After waking up super early yesterday we decided we owed it to ourselves to sleep in. So thats just what we did. Left our room for a little brunch around 11:30 and were pleasantly surprise to find the temperature hadn't quite reached boiling yet (hooray for no lip sweat!). Afterwards we went back to our hotel and rented bikes to head back to Angkor Wat.
We still had 1 day on our pass left so we figured a leisurely bike ride would be a nice way to round out our trip. Unfortunately, as with most of my plans, I miss judged the distances :(. It took us almost an hour of continuous peddling to reach the first temple. It wasn't the worst thing but the roads are crap here and you have to say a little prayer everytime one of the enormous buses pass you. Anyway we made it to a temple called Banteay Kdei which was pretty cool. Certainly not the best one but cool nonetheless. We overheard a guide explaining that the smell inside the temples was actually bat poo and pee. So I retract my earlier complaint about people peeing in the the temples and put forth a new complaint about bats peeing in the temples. The smell really is putrid though. We made our way to another temple called Ta Keo after and were rewarded with a gigantic fortress-like temple all to ourselves. Apparently this temple hadn't been finished with was plain to see but the size of it was incredible!
By now it was getting a little late in the day so we took the lead out and flew over to Angkor Wat. Our route took us back through Angkor Thom which was Ah. Mah. Zing. Riding our bikes through the gates was incredible. We read that you shouldn't come to the temples before 2 pm because of the lighting. We spent most of our 2nd day under a ferocious sun which did a great job of washing out our pictures. I'm not a big photog but even my weak skills could tell the lighting was bad. Today we were there with the sun on its way to bed which had 2 wonderful effects: cool temps and great lighting. We stopped and snapped a couple pics as even ran into a family of monkeys on the side of the road!!!!! Made it to Angkor Wat as they were closing so we ran in and grabbed a couple pics. It was super eerie since the temple was almost completely empty and dark. As we left some people had flashlights to help get out.
The bike ride back to town probably took a few years off our lives. Realize that there are very few traffic lights here and even those are generally only used as suggestions. There are perhaps 77,000 people living here and maybe 500,000 tourists as well. I think every single person was out tonight on a scooter or 194 foot mega bus. People are zipping all around us, horns are honking, people are yelling and laughing, children are crying. Pandemonium. A cop pulled out in front of Carolyn and did his bet to run her off the road. She gave him a few choice words which made him think twice about his careless driving. Intersections were the worst. My strategy was to close my eyes and peddle as fast a I could.
Fortunately we made it back with no issues at all. We even stopped and got authentic NY bagels from the night market! We could tell they were real NY bagels cause the little cambodian lady said so and it was written on her hand cart!
Being St Patricks Day we put our game faces on and went to paint the town green! By this I mean we were done with dinner and ready for bed by about 10:00! Hahaha, actually we found an authentic Irish bar right here in Siem Reap and got our green beer on! Niiiice! Seriously we actually had green beer! And not just any green beer. We had Cambodian-Irish green beer which means it was dirt cheap and probably had some questionable ingredients. Oh well. We ended up chatting with a British fellow about rugby and had a grand time!
Tomorrow we head for Phnom Penh. It's another lovely bus trip but atleast it'll only be 6 hours. We'll probably be there for 3 days before heading south to the beaches.
Pics:
1) Carolyn enjoying the bat pee smell at Banteay Kdei.
2) Green beer for the Blues!
3) Carolyn riding through the gate to Angkor Thom.
4) Me at Ta Keo.
5) Our monkey friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment