Siem Reap & Angkor Wat

The 1st time I heard of Angkor Wat was when Jackie Kennedy visited there about 50 years ago. The little town of Siem Reap must have been a dusty village then, and much jungle had still overgrown some of the distant temples. Now it's a must for the wealthy and status-obsessed to have that visa in their passport. As a result, the big five stars like Raffle's and other major hotels have moved in - otherwise it would still be a sleepy small town atmosphere. I have to mention what "sleepy town" meant on this trip - one had to go wake up the person on duty for many of the things needed - retail, travel agencies, cab drivers, all asleep - constantly.

Despite all the photos of AW, I never realized how widespread the temples are. They are in a National Park which is lovely and quiet and protects the objects and temples from poachers. You must buy a ticket daily for $20 which even includes your photo. If you want a car with AC, that is another $80 a day and a guide is $36. But I only wanted a Tuk-Tuk (shown here) which was driven slowly and sensibly by Mr. Wan Kai for $12 one day and $18 the next (we drove a greater distance the 2nd day). His TT was comfortable and in the cool of morning it was lovely to smell the flowers and trees and air. In the heat of the day, it was breezy and so nice. It was just like riding a bike (which reminds me - my Dr. Keystone & her partner rode their bikes through Cambodia and Laos rode through AW - for which I admire her so much).

I think the park must be 100 sq. miles, and there are endless temples. Some are in pretty good condition for being 800 years old, others are just piles of stones collapsed on the ground. Many universities internationally have measured loose blocks and are trying to design computer programs on how to assemble temples. Some have been re-assembled and re-constructed well. One disaster - in my view - was re-assembled badly - as in VERY badly - by the Chinese Government and it is a mess. Everything is sticking out everywhere and it does not look like anything else out there - which seems to have missed the Chinese volunteer's attention.

What a grand effort it must have been 800 years ago to cut away jungle and hack away at the blocks and build such remarkable structures. I thought they would be repetitive and boring after the first few, but not the case - there is an astonishing variety of styles and sizes.

I really enjoyed AW - it is not the buildings and hard and clever work of saving the place as much as the setting, the whole environment and ambience.

I had a nice hotel there (shown here). It was about $70 a night (rack rate $110) and was pretty and very comfortable. But all visitors were tethered to their own groups and so many are sealed into I-pods, blackberries, and computer screens that I did not meet anybody here at all. Most unusual. Need to stay in poorer hotels where people are more fraternal.