Siem Riep - Day 3

Today, we dropped the guide and headed out to see the women's temple (Banteay Srei) which is about 25 kms from town and then on to the Landmine museum.  I should have mentioned yesterday that we also toured Angkor Wat temple but our third camera battery died (taking over 1000 pictures will do that!) so didn't have any pictures of Angkor Wat temple itself so we also raced back there and did a quick photo run through our favorite parts.  Then we headed to a silk farm to see how it was made.  A busy day!

First about the women's temple. It was made from hard red sandstone that can be carved like wood so the engravings are of exceptional quality.  It was built by an advisor to the king so most of the buildings are done at a small scale.  Jen was completely fascinated by the place (I confess to being templed out at that point)but I enjoyed the architecture.

The place was Rachel's size!

After Banteay Srei, we jumped back in the car and headed for the Landmine Museum.  It was opened about 10 years ago as a Canadian sponsored NGO led by the efforts of a former Khmer Rouge (and Viet Cong) soldier who now goes by the name of Aki Ra.  His parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge and he was drafted into their army as an 8 year old child soldier.  Once he learned to shoot birds out of trees to feed the troops, he was promoted to killing humans.  He also laid thousands of landmines before defecting to the VC in their fight against the Khmer Rouge in 78 and did the same thing for them.  Upon reflection, he felt terrible about the things he did and has since taken up clearing landmines.  He started on his own and the NGO's hated him as he didn't use any of their procedures (e.g. mapping clear areas) and mounted a campaign to stop him but he managed to singlehandedly clear over 50,000 landmines.  The Canadian government stepped in and helped him setup an NGO and get proper training as well as open this museum.  He's also adopted over 30 kids that have been seriously injured from landmine explosions.  We didn't take a lot of pictures of the place as frankly, we were wandering around with our mouths hanging open.  CNN did a "Heros" 60 minute segment on him and we watched that as well.

He had samples of all of the different types of bombs and landmines but it became immediately clear that by far the most of them came from Soviet Bloc countries or China/Vietnam.  The US munitions were mostly intended to be used above ground and were easier to find/disarm.  The big exception to that was antitank mines but even there, the Russian versions outnumbered the US ones at least 20 to 1.  From his story, it appears that most of the mines were laid by the Khmer Rouge or Viet Cong - while the US focused on bombing the heck out of the place (later they revealed that they dropped more bombs on Cambodia than all sides did in WW2 - just like in Laos).  There were lots of examples of exploded or dud US bombs (but as many Russian).  I came away from the whole experience in awe of the Cambodian people and what they went through just as far as the war was concerned - we'll deal with the killing fields tomorrow.  Its clear that Aki Ra doesn't consider himself a hero (he still has nightmares most nights) and is doing this to recant his activities as a soldier.

He had married a young girl who obviously hero worshipped him and together with him adopted the 30 kids and defused thousands of landmines herself.   She died in childbirth a few years ago.  The irony of him living through all of that, and defusing 50K landmines and her dying of poor medical help really struck us hard.

After the museum, we headed back to Angkor Wat for some photos that we missed the day before but on the way, passed this temple which was abandoned in mid construction because it was hit by lightening which was considered bad luck!

Angkor Wat.  This is the masterpiece of King Suryavarman II and is the centerpiece of Siem Riep.  It is said to be the world's largest religious monument and was built at about the same time as the Notre Dam in Paris (early 12th century).  It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat and an outer wall 3.6 kilometres long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers (from Wikipedia).

Angkor Wat and its moat

On the left is as it was... on the right is after the French restored it

No... this isn't the temple.  This is the wall around it!

Looking the other way (it goes for kilometers!)

Yup... bullet holes from the fighting

The inside of the walls is as intricate

Its still quite a walk to the temple itself!

Halfway down there are two libraries... one on either side

Still walking there!

And me huffing and puffing to keep up to them!

The kings gate

His swimming pool (seriously)

The king's stairway up to the temple (the hill symbolizes Mount Meru).  This one is much "gentler" to climb than the one for everyone else!

Here's how we went up and down...  its darn near a ladder!

Rachel is sitting down there at the bottom as she wasn't allowed up (and Jen wasn't allowed up the day before as her shirt didn't cover her upper arms).

The inner walls from up on high... and the outer walls in the distance.  It's the same in all four direction!  The inner walls contain the murals taken below.

That wood above the door is almost 1000 years old.  They are reconstructing the ceiling.. very intricate wood paneling.

Now imagine a kilometer of this!  Tells the story of the war to take back the city from the Chams (Muslims)

This is the iconic photo of Angkor Wat temple proper but we couldn't wait for the ripples to die down to nothing as they were at 5pm the day before.  

After our second rush through Angkor Wat, we headed out of town again to see the Silk Farm.  It was really quite cool (and free to boot).  They do everything from grow the Mulberry Plants to feed the Silkworms to weave the silk into fine fabric for sale and export.

Cambodian Mulberry Plants produce gold silk unlike any other silk in the world (which are white)

Feeding the silkworms.  These are about a week old.  They have a 42 day life cycle.  They are born, eat, mate and die as they become moths for a day (only to mate).

Klingon Gak anybody?

They spin their cocoons on this basket so it's easy to get them off.  They use 80% of them and allow the other 20% to hatch and mate for the next generation.  You can see the gold in the cocoons.

They  boil the 80% to kill off the moth before it emerges from the cocoon (if it does, it will eat through one end of the cocoon to escape and thus sever the single silk thread that makes up the cocoon. 

I left this picture the original size so that you can see the individual threads that are coming off of each cocoon.  This machine winds them up.  There are literally hundreds of threads unraveling from each of hundreds of cocoons.

Rolling hundreds of individual (bleached) threads back into loops so that they can be woven into the final patterns.

Each one of those large bobbins is unraveling to the prior machine

The final product!

As you can tell, we loved Siem Riep.  Jen and Rachel hit the night markets most nights and we found a Mexican food restaurant (beside Nancy's Blue Pumpkin Ice Cream Parlor) that sold draft beer for $0.75, Margaritas for $1.50 and the best tasting Taco's I've had since Mexico City in the 1970's for $1.00.   I even picked up a couple of "Omega" watches!

Cambodia is definitely growing on us!