Temple Fever in Cambodia (& Vietnam)

The ship arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with five days to explore. We decided to take advantage of a three-day temple excursion to Cambodia. This was our favorite excursion of the trip!

The first day, we visited the well-known Ankgor Wat, topping off the day with a gorgeous view of the sunset. Ankgor Wat stands for “City Pagoda” which fits because it is the world’s largest religious monument –a microcosm of the Hindu universe (yep, I am stealing this from a book). It was built during the reign of Suryavarvman II, in the first half of the 12th century, both as a capital and the State Temple dedicated to Vishnu. We spent three hours visiting numerous temple ruins of Ankgor Wat, and visited nine more temples the next day! The second day, we woke up at 4:30 AM to view the sunrise at Ankgor Wat, which was really disappointing because it was cloudy and looked the same as yesterday (only with drowsy eyes this time). We then visited the following temples that day: Ta Prohm, Bayon, Baphuoun, Terrace of Leper King and Elephant Terrace, Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon and PreRup. Now do you see why I must use a book to remind myself of all the major facts of the temples? Our favorites over the entire two days were Ta Prohm and Bayon. Ta Prohm is a temple monastery that has tree roots interlaced between the ruins (see picture with SAS student). It was very beautiful and natural and we wonder how long this temple will remain due to these roots being a source of destruction. Though, they are renovating some areas. Bayon was unique with faces sketched into the 37 towers (see picture). Each tower has anywhere from two to four faces on each cardinal point and apparently this temple has different religious phases consisting of both Buddhism and Hinduism. While I enjoyed seeing all these temple ruins, I am good to go for about a year in terms of temples. My anthropological husband was a bit disappointed in my lack of enthusiasm after temple #5.

Aside from temples, we had two Cambodian dinners, one of which had music and dancing. While this performance was happening, Chris was looking across to a table next to ours (there were more than 500 people in this massive, touristy restaurant) and saw his ex-girlfriend from high school! She is Danish and lives in Copenhagen, and Chris hadn’t seen or spoken with her in over 9 years. Chris had a few other serendipitous moments in Cambodia. The previous day, he met some Germans who know his host family in Regensburg. Then, after we had returned to the ship, he heard from another ex-girlfriend who had also been at the Angkor temples that same week!

We also visited a large water village, including a crocodile farm. Once again, we felt like interlopers viewing these individuals’ way of living; and yet, it was fascinating. How else does one know these exist? We wrestle with these questions as tourists. Anyway, we saw lots of families on their boats, attending to daily chores, such as taking little fish out of their fishing nets. We wonder if some of these fish go to the markets where they offer tourists a “foot massage” for three dollars, which entails little fish biting at your feet. We hear it tickles and stayed clear. We often say we want to come back to specific places we visited; however, I truly believe we will make our way back to Cambodia. At the same time, we could visit Thailand and Indonesia. We still have more we want to see!

I didn’t feel like we got the full experience of Vietnam. We only had two days and we were exhausted. The first day, we were sluggish walking around and came upon a Vietnamese theater with a movie in English subtitles. We went for it. The movie was a bit dramatic so, of course, I cried…a lot. I looked a bit ridiculous walking around after this movie with my puffy nose and eyes. We did visit the War Remnants Museum to learn about the “American War” as called here. It was extremely disturbing to read and see the brutality used by all the fighters, especially the effects of Agent Orange. How do people and countries get away with this malice? Mostly in Vietnam, we went shopping. This was the place to find souvenirs. We spent a lot of money despite the strong dollar in Vietnam. But wow, some of these students (and staff) went crazy with consumerism! It was an interesting trap we all fell into. One person would buy a book on Angkor Wat from a child on the street (say, the one I am using right now to write this blog, as example), and the next thing we all knew, everyone else was buying the same book (and bracelets, post cards, t-shirts, tree ornaments, flutes, etc.) We definitely fell into this trap as well. We do think we have all our souvenirs covered now, thankfully. Or at least, we hope because we are losing space quickly for our travel back home.