Raffles hotel in Siem Reap is gorgeous- like a glamorous movie set about colonialism and espionage and French spies; complete with an old timey elevator.

Siem Reap is the ‘ancient capital’ of Cambodia. Thirty years ago there were just a couple of run down hotels, now there are nearly 300. In fact, a few years ago, before it was restored, Raffles had a tree growing in the middle of the swimming pool. War and neglect and the jungle will do that to you.
At the entrance, the beautiful Kmer (Cambodian people) greet you with a cool towel each time you return from an outing, because this country is as hot and wet as a dryer full of sheets.
The view from our balcony looks like this  so we are in that pool in a minute and it is fabulous. Then cocktails in the lounge with the gregarious piano player that performs American standards and occasionally tries to sing along in a wobbly alto.
By now the gears in our body clocks are totally busted, so we have no hesitation volunteering for the 5am ‘sunrise over Angkor Wat’ tour our first morning out. It beats staring at the ceiling (which has a slow rotating fan a’la Apocalypse Now) and asking each other what time it is, like a sad mantra. We hope it will also be an escape from the heat, but even at dawn the air is thick and sultry. But there are no bare knees or shoulders allowed inside the temples, even the ruined ones, so it’s sleeves and pants.

The city is full of people. Our guide says it is the end of some festival or another, as they have many festivals. The most popular means of transport here are motor scooters, and they buzz by, each holding 2 or 3 or frequently 4 souls. We see grandmas perched behind mom and dad holding an infant. Few wear helmets.

                  
An auto made to seat 4 will have 8 to 10 people squeezed inside. They can do this because the people are small, and any child under the age of 6 stands. The streets, particularly once you get off the main thoroughfare are also full of happy cows, and dogs.

Angkor Wat is a massive temple built by a king with a long unpronounceable name in the 12th century. It was built as a Hindu temple, and you see lots of Hindu relief carvings once you get inside, but is now Buddhist. It has survived a number of wars (not hard to find a gazillion bullet holes) and occupations and at one point was swallowed up by the jungle and dug out again.
At dawn we watch the sun rise with other pilgrims.

 

Before touring the site, we visit the monastery 

where the monks give us a blessing.

the temple complex itself is immense and made of sandstone as anything built of wood does not last in this hot, wet climate

Kevin imitates the lion 

i liked this girl’s outfit

and the surrounding moat had a lily pond

We move on to the next temple (there are a ton of ancient temples in Siem Reap, we will visit 3)

Bayon Temple is famous for all the Buddha faces carved into it, like this:

It also offers elephant rides 

and it is a zoowith the Buddhas smiling serenely over the mobs of tourists. It also has some super cool Bas reliefs, some depicting conquests and voyages

 Up close you can see man overboard being eaten by a crocodile 

finally we visit Ta Prohm, which is famous for being featured in the tomb raider movie, which is a temple you can watch literally being eaten by the jungle.

We are woozy with heat when we return to the hotel, but are committed to seeing the floating villages on Tonie Sap lake, which we are told will be much cooler. To get there we drive down a long, rutted road scattered with small businesses and water buffalo.                                                                                        including this barber shop.

we arrive at the boatwhich is sort of delightful. We are at the end of the rainy monsoon season, so the lake is very high. The floating village has moved into the river temporarily, where it is safer until the lake recedes a bit. The village has a church and a school,

homes, 

and businesses.The life of these people is very simple, but they do not think of themselves as poor. They live with the bloody, and not too distant memory, of the Khmer Rouge. Our guide soberly recounted the daily terror of his childhood. His father was employed in rice delivery, and would skim a little extra for his starving family. When the village elders saw that his family was not quite as skinny as the other families, his father was brought in for questioning. Had he been discovered, he would’ve been killed on the spot. That they now live freely with relative prosperity makes the Cambodians a very contented people, warm and generous and quick to laugh.

That evening we enjoy massages at the spa (excellent) and a big Cambodian food cart buffet (I have a terrific shabu style soup prepared before my eyes with enough chile to water my eyes) followed by a classical performance of the Ramakerti, a theatrical dance in which a monkey king woos a mermaid. We get our photo taken with the troop. The skirt I am wearing is traditional Cambodian and was a gift from NatGeo, they give us a lot of little presents during our travels.

So it’s hard to be too upset when we are told  that China has pulled our landing permit, most likely because they do not want us to visit Tibet. Because they are jerks. I am sad to miss Tibet, but excited that we are being re-routed to …Bhutan!