Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

We came to Siem Reap with the intention of visiting Angkor Wat – Cambodia’s biggest attraction and the largest temple in the world. But it’s wet season here and the weather gods didn’t cooperate, so we ended up spending the a few days just hanging around the city and trying not to get pissed on. During one short pause in the rain, we visited the nearby “floating village”…. basically a community of hundreds of boats in which people live. As part of the community, there is also a floating school, a floating basketball/volleyball court, a floating police station, a floating restaurant, a floating church and a number of floating shops! There was also a crocodile farm and many of the children floated around in little basins and played with snakes!

Siem Reap itself is a nice enough city, but it can only hold your attention for so long. So thankfully the weather gods eventually smiled on us and the rain finally stopped, allowing us to check out the nearby famous ruins.

So what can we say about the ruins at Angkor Wat? Well they really are very very big. They are very old (about 1000 years) and it’s amazing that they are still standing. They were used as the set in the film Tomb Raider. There are many ruins nearby that are also pretty spectacular (one set has a bunch of large trees growing through the structure and it is interesting to watch how the roots have grown around and crumbled many of the very large walls). And one temple had 260 faces carved into the rock, looking down on us and being mysterious. All in all we have to admit that we were fairly impressed by everything but one day was enough for us….there is only so much enjoyment you can get from looking at temples and ruins, and we were thankful that we hadn’t visited any temples since Bangkok over a month ago.

Oh yeah, we couldn’t possibly finish our report on Siem Reap without talking about the fish massage. Basically, it’s a large paddling pool filled with little fish, you dip your feet in and they EAT away at the dead skin on your feet. Of course we had to try it and it was the most unusual sensation ever! The fish must have been fairly hungry as they really swarmed our feet and didn’t let up for the 10 minutes. Couldn’t call it therapeutic though…..we just found it ticklish and Conor couldn’t stop laughing the whole time.