Sunday, October 28, 2007

Cambodia Part 2

Have you seen “Tomb Raider?” You know the movie with Angelina Jolie where she goes to the hidden temple and the statue with 4 different faces (one on each side) attacks her? Well, that’s where we went next.

The tuk-tuk dropped us off at a bridge and the driver told us that he would wait for us on the other side. There were two rows of statues on either side of the bridge…

There was a gate at the end of the bridge that we crossed under & then we got into the tuk-tuk and continued on to the temple. The driver told us that we would actually visit a few temples at this stop as they were within walking distance. But the first one was the “Tomb Raider” temple.

There were giant stone faces everywhere…


We then walked to the next ruin. Some of them were palaces and some were temples, but they were all amazing!

(They are in the process of restoring the temples so the scaffolding that you see is work in progress.)

We then got back on the tuk-tuk and made him stop for a restroom break. Normally, a restroom wouldn’t be exciting, but this is Cambodia after all. The restroom had a Western toilet, and there was a sign behind the toilet that I found very amusing. (Sorry it’s so blurry).

Then we were off to the next set of ruins. Now, we had quickly come to realize that from the place the tuk-tuk dropped us off to the entrance to the temple we were “fair game” to the vendors and kids selling souvenirs. During this brief walk we were harassed by little 7-year-old kids “You buy postcard? Only $1. 10 for $1.” The sad thing was was that they were all selling the same thing so if you did buy a postcard (or a flute or book) at the first stop, you would still get harassed by others trying to sell you the same exact thing!

This temple was not my favorite. It was one of those temples with REALLY steep steps & the top was really high up. Some of you may know of my fear of heights…I got about half-way up the stairs before I had to go back down (and going down was MUCH harder than going up).

It was noon by the time we had finished at that temple (yes, we had been doing this for 7 hours already). So we had our driver take us on to the next set of ruins & we had lunch there.

End Part 2

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