You'll be glad to hear that we're at our last temple, Preah Khan. This was a large monastery, and housed 100,000 people in its heyday, and is also one of the unrestored temples. It's one of my favorites, largely because there were lots of fragments that you could mentally piece together to see how the site originally looked, and the whole thing looks so fragile. While it survived for centuries in the jungle, it will be interesting to see how these ruins hold up under the strains of mass tourism.

These two temples were built in the middle of artificial lakes. The sister I previously referred to as invisible made a surprise appearance to complain that my directions, like the top left photo, bear no resemblance to where the photo actually is. And I agree with that, since the photos are in completely different locations each time I look at the blog on a different computer. So I'm going to stop that, and also stop referring to her as the invisible one, especially because Pomme is pretty close to invisible these days. Back to blogging, the one photo that I would have previously described as top left but now will describe as the round thing in the grass field, is Neak Pean. This was a smallish lake and it is filled with water in the rainy season. In the dry season, it loses its appeal and just looks like a round thing in a grass field. Anyway, this was built as a hospital. Actually the lake was the hospital, not the building, since sick people were cured by being dipped in the water, which is one way to keep health care costs down. The other two photos are of East Mebon. A few entries ago I showed you the big lake with a dock for the king, which was the West lake. The East Mebon temple was built in the middle of the East Lake, and reachable only by boat. The lake has long since dried up and is now rice fields.

Preah Rup is one of the oldest temples, and is also one of the few you're allowed to walk all over, which adds to its rundown state. It's also ok to walk up Angkor Wat, which is strange given its importance. I guess the authorities take comfort in the fact that the original inhabitants of Siam Reap bear no physical resemblance to today's tourists. I'm guessing this because the temples are scaled by long flights of very steep and narrow steps, as you can tell by the struggling little postcard seller in the photo. Although it's tough to get up, it is manageable, but getting down in one piece is a real challenge. So the old inhabitants must have been about 80 percent legs for them to have designed stairs like this. Or maybe not, since archeologists think the temple was used for state funerals, so maybe only the dying person went up the stairs, then was trapped up there until he died.

Moving along, next up is Ta Keo, built around 1000. This was meant to be yet another state capital/temple complex, but the king that was building it died while it was still under construction and it was abandoned. For this reason the temple is only partially finished and undecorated, and looks a bit like a pyramid rather than its fellow temples.

OK, as promised, here is Ta Prohm, the celebrity temple. It's the setting for Lara Croft Tomb Raider, and probably the most popular temple in Siam Reap. It was a mid-size temple when it was built, housing 12,000 priests, monks, dancers etc. and supported by 80,000 farmers and craftsmen in nearby villages. But nobody really cares about that. It's the only temple that was left in its original intertwined state with the jungle. Obviously trees growing in the walls of the building causes lots of structural pressure, but the French decided to leave this temple as they found it, enmeshed in tree roots.

After viewing photos of your sixth temple, you may sympathize with my lazy friends and decide you've had enough temple viewing and move on. And I don't blame you, but I'm going to charge along nonetheless, and further entice you with a teaser that the celebrity temple is coming up next. But first, some photos of Banteay Kdei, a very large Buddhist temple from the 12th century.

The large body of water is Srah Srang, which was either built for irrigation purposes or, more likely, religious ceremonies. The platform in the photos was the king's dock, and is now occupied by begging kids. One downside of Siam Reap is there are dozens of little kids following you around everywhere, selling postcards, drinks or just begging. They're cute and friendly rather than aggressive, but they are persistent so you either have to buy lots of postcards (which of course attracts other postcard vendors notwithstanding that you just satisfied your postcard needs with the previous vendor) or tune them out. I've also thrown in a photo of another temple, Prasat Kravan, at no additional cost to you!

The main temple complex at Angkor Thom is called the Bayon, which tourists call the smiley face temple for obvious reasons. But the complex itself is much bigger, and has bits and pieces spread out all over the place, including the foundations of the old royal palace, and some government buildings. The foundation photo here is called the Terrace of the Elephants, where the king would view victory processions, and the other photo is of the royal storehouse. There's also a very cool bridge leading here lined with headless Buddhas but Somchai wouldn't photograph it. Angkor Thom also incorporated temples from earlier pre Angkor Wat capitals, most notably Baphuon. This was a huge pile of scaffolding when we were there as apparently the whole thing collapses in a breeze, but I read that it's recently been reopened, and is probably a trip highlight now.

The Vietnamese sacked Angkor Wat in 1177, and the king then started a new capital city, Angkor Thom, a couple of miles north. I'm not sure why the entire area is always referred to as Angkor Wat rather than the proper town name of Siam Reap, because the large majority of photos are actually of Angkor Thom rather than Angkor Wat. And that pictorial preference is due to the fact that the king had his face built into the city walls, temples, guard towers, pretty much everywhere, which makes for some cool photos.

Despite its abandonment for many centuries, Angkor Wat is now firmly entrenched as Cambodia's national symbol, and occupies the center of the Cambodian flag. In 2003, it also touched off one of those incredibly stupid international incidents that seem to happen all the time in Asia. A Thai actress was reported to have said that Angkor Wat actually belongs to Thailand. Now, of course she said no such thing as everyone eventually agreed, and even if she had, she's hardly in a position to set Thai foreign policy. All it took was the rumor that this was said, and the Cambodians went wild, burning down Thai owned banks, hotels and other businesses in Phnom Penh, the capital, laying seige to the embassy while mobs wandered the streets looking for Thais to lynch. The Thai navy had to come in to rescue the remaining Thais and for a while it looked like war would erupt, all because of a fake rumor of a comment by an actress.

Being a Hindu temple originally it comes with a very complicated religious system behind it. For better or worse, we had a very knowledgeable guide with us. He went through every detail of every carving at a very rapid clip in a clearly memorized speech, but was really thrown off if you asked a question which caused him to deviate from the prepared remarks. I think we were the first group to ask him questions since his prepared speech delivered in a monotone ran to about twenty hours, which is probably enough for most tourists. He loosened up some at dinner, although where we really threw him was when Reza tried to explain that Somchai and I were gay. He never believed it since he kept saying gays had to be wearing dresses, so I don't know what he's making of Siam Reap's gay bar now.

Angkor Wat was built in the 12th century as a Hindu temple, like most of the Siam Reap temples. It was then populated with Buddhas in the 13th century, then the Buddhas were hacked up by a subsequent Hindu king, then partially restored as the country permanently became Buddhist. What the Hindu king didn't desecrate treasure hunters carted off after it was rediscovered, so the overall aesthetic is of a Hindu temple decorated with headless Buddhas. The very general idea is that the tower complex at the center of the temple is supposed to be Mount Meru, where the Hindu gods reside, and then the city was organized around this base.

The temples, and in fact the whole area, is commonly called Angkor Wat, although that's only the largest of the many temples. (As an aside, the real town name of Siam Reap translates into something like Destroy the Thais, which is very welcoming.) Siam Reap served as the capital of the Cambodian empire from the 900's, although different kings built different cities/palaces/temples in the same general area, which accounts for the huge spread of ruins at the site today. The site was abandoned either because it was destroyed by the Thais, or because it ran out of water, and was left to fall apart in the jungle, which, as you'll see later gives some great Indiana Jones/Lara Croft type pictures. In the 19th century a French explorer stumbled across it, and Siam Reap's tourism boom got underway.

When we visited, Cambodia was still very unstable, and tourism was still pretty low key. In addition to the perennial government mess, there were still lots of land mines all over the area left over from the Vietnam War, which also limited the tourism appeal. Historically there was only one Western hotel, the very nice colonial style Grand Hotel (the evening photo). It was pretty small and fully booked for our trip, but the second western hotel had just opened, the Sofitel. This was quite a vote of confidence in Cambodia's future, because it's a very large, modern hotel. I would have preferred the Grand for the atmosphere, but the Sofitel was quite comfortable and had a great pool and decent food. Both were important, since full day temple touring is lethal, so you've got to take a long lunch break at the pool to survive, and there were no restaurants in town, just a couple local hole in the wall bars. In the last few years, tourism has exploded, and there are a dozen huge Western hotels (unfortunately the Grand has recently succumbed to the temptation and built a huge modern addition, totally ruining the place). There's also a full fledged tourism district with scores of restaurants, and even a trendy gay bar. But when we were there Siam Reap was a very sleepy place. Sofitel: (6), Room-6, Facilities-6, Service-5, Wow-0.

59. Siam Reap, Cambodia Feb '01

My friend Reza was touring around Asia to celebrate being one of the last people to profit from the last days of the internet boom. We spent a couple of days in Bangkok and then took the one hour Bangkok Airways flight to Siam Reap, where we met his friend from business school. The four of us spent three days in the town exploring the world famous temple ruins. Well, actually Somchai and I did most of the exploring, while Reza and friend petered out relatively quickly. The temples are ridiculously atmospheric, but there are over seventy of them, spread over many miles and situated in the hottest place on earth, so at some point the marginal utility of each new temple diminishes rapidly.