Cambodia Day 1: Roluos Temples, Part 1: Bakong

We taught classes right up until Christmas Eve, so it was Christmas day that I left on vacation to Cambodia. I hadn't slept the night before because I was packing and excited, and I had a cold wait for the bus because I had packed for the heat of my destination. At the airport, I coincidentally ran into my friends who taught at another branch of my school, across town. We hung out for a little while and then boarded our respective flights.

The plane transfer in China was a mess of bureaucracy, where they called out individual names as our passports passed checks (I think?). The whole process was exponentially more difficult because my ears refused to pop and everything sounding muffled and far away. I eventually made it onto my flight to Siem Reap. The flight was short, and mostly notable for the view as we landed of the sunset over rivers and hundreds of ponds. After shuffling through customs and acquiring a visa, I took a $2 moto ride into town. There, a constant stream of vendors aggressively tried to sell me things as I made my way to check into a $5 a night villa, where I crashed hard.

I eventually forced myself to wakefulness after twelve hours. I attempted to rent a White Bicycle, that is, a bicycle from a company where the proceeds go to a good cause. After a couple failed attempts, I ended up with a too small bike for one dollar a day.

Despite it being late December in the Norther hemisphere (barely), it was blazing hot during my fifteen kilometer bike out to the Roluos temples. The bike chain fell off three times over the course of the day, and my knees almost hit the handle bars, but it was a flat ride and there was hardly any traffic. On the way I passed some small villages raised on stilts.

It turns out that the Roluos temples use the same ticket as all of the Angkor temples, so after all of that bicycling I ended up hiring a moto driver to take me to the main Angkor gate and back, passing the place where I started in the process. The moto driver asked me to set the price, which is weird but makes sense since tourists will almost certainly overshoot the going price since things are so damned cheap in Cambodia.

The first temple I actually managed to visit was Bakong.

As I walked toward the temple complex, a little girl blocked my path and insisted on putting a flower ring onto my finger.

She presumably expected me to pay for the unasked for gift, but I had read that children were usually organized to beg in this manner and rarely got to keep the money for themselves, so I simply continued on to the temples. I did leave the flower nearby so that she would hopefully find it and not have to make another ring in order to talk with the next set of tourists.

Also on the path to the temple were musicians playing traditional Cambodian music and who had all been maimed by landmines. Lonely Planet actually asked that tourists give to these injured people because the social safety net in Cambodia is practically nonexistent, and Lonely Planet usually suggests avoiding giving to beggars. I was certainly happy to give them a couple dollars, which goes a long way here. 

The central temple of Bakongwas a large stone ziggurat, a series of layered platforms with stairs leading to the top. It was decorated with statues of elephants and lions.

The temple overlooks a modern Buddhist temple.

Surrounding the central stone building were ornate brick towers.

Some of the brick towers were crumbling more than the others and were held up by what looked like wooden basketball backboards

I could see why the Buddhists had chosen their location as I stood near the entrance to their temple and looked back at the ancient temple complex. 

Here I am against the same wall, for scale:

One corner of the complex had a brick tower that was collapsed and covered in spider webs, and hence what one expects from a jungle temple (if one has watched too many movies). 

Before it fell, the spider ruin probably looked like the surviving brick towers. 

I took my time enjoying the temple viewing, then cycled on to Preah Ko.