In the lands of Cham & Khmer — Part 3 (The conclusion)

The final leg of our trip was to the place that beholds Angkor Wat, Siem Reap. Siem Reap is a small city in the North Western part of Cambodia. It owes its popularity as one of the most popular destinations in the world to Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat and many of the allied temple structures are very much ingrained in the cultural milieu of Cambodia — one of the examples of that would be the fact that it is adorned on the flag of Cambodia.

We came to Siem Reap from Hanoi in VietJet airways. It was a small journey of within 2 hours. The airport of Siem Reap is very small - it should be counted as the smallest airport I've ever been to. Cambodia gives two options for the tourist visa - On arrival and e-visa. We had opted for e-visa. This saved our time at the airport a lot. 

Cambodians are very gentle people. In all our six-day stay, we did not come across a single incident of rudeness or anything of that sort. Perhaps the relatively soft nature of Cambodians has been taken for granted that all three of its neighboring countries — Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos — have tried to invade it at one point or the other. As per our guide for Angkor Wat the next day, Cambodia has a very restricted coastal line because some parts of Cambodia was occupied by Thailand. I'm not sure on the veracity of the claim as when I searched to know the details, google didn't yield any result on the same. 

Almost all the Cambodians I met speak English in Siem Reap. All the stores, hotels and even the small shops accept the US dollar. This was told to me by the Indian-origin Kenyan man I had met in Hanoi. So, I never bothered to exchange the currency to Cambodian Riel. I have to mention the omnipresent Tuk-Tuk. Tuk-Tuk in Cambodia is Indian equivalent of rickshaw but it is pulled by a motorcycle. They are cheap, comfortable and readily available in all of Siem Reap. 

Our tour guide gave many interesting trivia and snippets about Angkor Wat in particular and Cambodia in general. He said Khmer language and Kannada have many words in common. this was a shocker for me. I always knew Cambodia has some Tamil influence as I knew Tamil kings have traveled, ruled and built some of the monuments in this part of the world. But, I never knew this bit about Kannada. He said a few words like Ratri, Rajah, etc are common to both the languages. He said this is because Kannada traders, not kings traveled to Cambodia may be around 14th or 15th century and many of them married the locals and started living there. 

Siem Reap is filled with a lot of tourists. Tourism is one of the major sources of income to Cambodia. From the past many years, the number of tourists has been over a million. I learned that the Angkor Wat temple was abandoned,  attained the state of obscurity 15th century onwards after being the center of the capital of Cambodia from the 9th to 15th century. No one knew of the structures until a Frenchman discovered it in the later parts of the 20th century. It's only in the 90's tourists started pouring in. 

Touted as the world's largest temple, Angkor Wat is truly magnificent. the structure of the main temple is modeled on Mount Meru, the celestial mountain with 5 peaks which is significant to Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists. The temple structure is enclosed by a wide moat which is representative of the cosmic ocean. 

The main temple structure

Apsara Dancer

Carving depicting Mahabharata war

In front of the temple

Behind us is the Adi-Shesha, six-headed serpent structure which is found in many places in Siem Reap town

Once you enter the temple, you can witness the towering structures - some of them intricately carved to depict the scenes of Mahabharata, Apsara dancers, other epics - the detailing and the delicacy employed gives away the fact that it is indeed a work of a lot of skilled artists spanning over several years of time. 

There are other temples around Angkor Wat - Angkor Thom, Bayon, and Ta Prohm. The last one, Ta Prohm was featured in Angelina Julie's movie Tomb Raider. Bayon temple has a lot of Brahma-like big face carvings. (Cambodians say it's King Suryavarman) In Ta Prohm, giant roots have embraced the entire structure. It has been left as it is, uncut. Archaeological Survey of India is involved in restoration work.  

That's a huge root 

Near Bayon temple

The Bayon temple

Our group for the day consisted of us, an English lady, a German mother-daughter duo, the entertaining and informative local guide Phearom, and the rest Malaysians. It was a quite friendly and fun group.

On the way to Angor Thom 

Our group for the day 

The next day, we visited Tonlé Sap lake, perhaps the biggest lake in Cambodia. It is famous for two things - the floating village and the mangrove forest. It was a thrilling experience for me as I had neither seen mangrove forest nor floating village anywhere. I had heard there is a floating market near Saigon. I missed visiting that. This was a kind of compensation. 

Houses elevated to a certain height in the floating village

The Mangrove Forest - reminded of the sets of "Anaconda"

In conclusion: Vietnam is beautiful. When people asked me why 8 days, I had no answer. Now, I can say there is a lot to see in Vietnam & it's still not that popular with Indians say like Thailand or Bali. But it has all the reasons to be. It has something for everyone - the nature lovers, adventure seekers, history buffs, lovers etc.

Angkor Wat stands as testimony to the fact that what a dedicated, patient, creative, skilled above all devoted populace can do. Of course, with exemplary patronage which sustains all, which doesn't think of just immediate survival and sundry but a longlasting legacy of finer achievements for the future generations. If there are seven wonders of the world, this surely needs to be one among them.