It was difficult to imagine how today could live up to yesterday's visits to Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. We were going to see more temples in the Angkor area; ones we'd never heard off before.
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| Temple of Shiva |
The first destination for today was the Temple of Shiva, built in the 11th century. It was a longer drive through the Cambodian countryside, and on the way we had a glimpse into the lives of some of the local people. They live in wooden shacks, usually raised on stilts all along the roadside. Many grow rice, and we saw the rice in the fields and women drying the cut rice. Others exploit the palm trees for the leaves, wood and palm sugar - which we saw them making by churning in heated metal pans, and we tasted the resulting sugary sweets (which were very tasty).
When we got to the temple we found it was much smaller than the others we'd seen, but covered with exquisite carvings. It's also known as the 'Ladies Temple' and it did have a much more feminine feel to it. The only problem was that it was very crowded due to it's small size.
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| Pre Rup Temple |
Next we visited the three-tiered temple of Pre Rup. This was temple similar to Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom but was much higher, and after a tough climb there was a fantastic 360 view from the top. The steps of all the temples are very narrow and very high - this is to ensure that people have to climb in a slow and respectful way but it does make them very hard work - and potentially dangerous (not that health and safety are a high priority here).
We then visited the lake of Srah Srang which is a man-made lake used for royal ablution ceremonies which impressively large and very beautiful.
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| Ta Prohm |
After lunch we went to another temple called Ta Prohm. By this time we were feeling a bit templed-out and weren't really looking forward to another one. This was a bit different though - it had been left in much the same state as when it was discovered and had been invaded by the jungle. The effect created by this is pure Indiana Jones; and the atmosphere is amazing; when you walk through the doorways and passages it's like visiting a huge film set. In fact, we both agreed that this was the most incredible place we've visited here so far.
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| Sunset from Phnom Bakeng |
We rounded off the day with a climb to the top of our last temple here, Phnom Bakeng to watch the sunset. This is a very old temple and perched on top of the only hill for miles. It was a tough climb and we joined a very large crowd sat on the top watching the sun go down. The number of people made it feel like an important ceremony - but I guess its like that every day.
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