Cambodia Working Trip Day 6 - Guest Blogged by 浪迹天涯小狗

After concluding the meeting yesterday, mistress is booked for team-building today, n where else to go for team-building in Siem Reap than Ang Kor Wat?

Actually its more like there's nothing else in Siem Reap except Ang Kor Wat.

Due to the time lapse (Cambodia is 1 hr slower than SG), mistress got up too early to prepare for the trip. So she opened the curtains, opened the glass balcony door, and sat on the wooden chair, expecting to breathe in the fresh air and view the day break. But the air is not fresh, as the area is too dry, and the view is blocked by the haze and the building and worse of all, she invited a lot of MOSQUITOES into the room.



After chasing the mosquitoes, bathe with the remaining mosquitoes, went for a quick breakfast and loaded onto the tour bus, we reached Ang Kor Wat.


AWK in the morning sun.


Zoomed up.

We had a tour guide with us to bring us thru the place and introduce the history. AWK had actually witnessed various wars, bearing scars from the bloodshed with pieces of history scripted on its walls.


Bullet Holes.


One of the structures.











The tour guide brought us around the corridor which was carved with all these pictures depicting certain history. Mistress only remembered the churning of the milk where the gods and the devils each pulled on their side of a giant serpent to snatch the immortality milk while the king of the sea tugged on the middle of the serpent and turned both sides around, creating a water cyclone. Aiya I think its better for u all to read up than to listen to this fella.


Flowery subjects.

N these scriptors are so detailed they even went to the extent of carving different pattern clothes for the subjects. N there's like thousand of them on the wall. Woahh..



AWK is full of steps which are so narrow and steep u had to literally crawl ur way up. They say its a sign of respect to the gods residing at the top.



If climbing up is bad enuff, coming down is worse. For the garangs, there's always the same way where u climb up, aka those broken steps. But to be on the safer side, there's this flight of makeshift stairs with a shaky hand bar for ppl to use, jus that its kinda scary when the fella in front of u takes a bloody long time to make his next step and on-lookers below are jus waiting to see if some incidents happen, like dropping a hat or a shoe.



AWK is still undergoing reconstruction ever since dunno when. Spare parts are laid out on the courtyard like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, waiting its turn to find its match and placed back to their original place. There once was a company who was contracted to clean up the place and who stupidly used, of all things, ACID! to cleanse the exterior, which of cos, defaced a lot of carvings on the sandstone surface. Leaving it as it is seems to be better.


Lines of tourist stores outside AWK.


AWK amidst the mid morning sun.


Bride.

AWK to Cambodians is like wat Chinese Garden is to the wedding couples in SG. AWK was literally swarmed with clusters of wedding shooters, sweating around in their full makeup and gowns, trying to capture the beautiful moment for their rememberance.


Bridal car.


Kid Touters.

At every tourist spot, u see these kids with baskets of products or stacks of books pestering u to buy something from them. US 1 dollar, US 1 dollar, they claimed as they try to sweet talk u into opening ur wallets for them.


Cheap ciggies going for US$1.50 = SG$2.25!!


Entrance of Ang Kor Thom / Bayon.


Ang Kor Thom.

As it was really hot and tiring to be walking ard under the scorching sun, we decided to go back to the hotel to freshen up b4 proceeding with our sunset viewing plans.


Elephant ride for US$5 (i think) but its freaking scary!


Cob web along the hill trek.


Look at how freaking steep the stairs is.


View from the highest point.

Bcos we arrived too early, we wasted our time staring at the carvings and looking for a cooler spot to rest.





Soon the place was crowded with tourists, mostly from Korea, trying to catch a glimpse of the acclaimed sunset.


Tourists.


Sunset.

We din stay long as the sun went into hiding amongst the clouds/haze. Thus we proceeded back for dinner while tourists are still making their way up.



Along the way, we got down to buy fruits from the occasional stores in the forest and we came across this milk fruit, which our Cambodian colleague bought for us to try.


Milk fruit.


A concert hall that we passed by that has a beautiful exterior which looks cool at nite.


Dissected milk fruit

The waitress at the restaurant was kind enuff to even cool it for us even thou its not a product of their restaurant. Althou mistress was hesitant to try it at 1st but eventually she took a try and din regret. Its very sweet, something which cant be really identified to any SG fruits.


Ang Kor beer.

I keep seeing this beer on the table at most dinners.. hmm.. No its not mistress!

Day 7 next.