the Temples of Angkor Day 2

The morning of day two exploring Siem Reap found us driving through parades of trucks loaded with people, flags and music. We soon learned from our tuk tuk driver that national parliamentary elections were coming up. So, this was the last hoorah at campaigning. This was very familiar to us (as we've been through many elections, protests and more during our time in Thailand). We also learned that the current Prime Minister of Cambodia Hun Sen has been in office for the last fifteen years. He is a member of the Cambodian People's Party (for which we saw signs everywhere). Our driver was also a member of this party and his mother either held office or worked on the campaign - we couldn't quite understand. Anyway, here is a picture from the campaigning parade:



Once we reached the Angkor park, we visited about six or seven more temples. They were truly amazing. Though we thought we'd seen everything yesterday, we were continually delighted and surprised by different architectural techniques and the attention to detail. My favorite temple of the day was the "jungle temple" (think Laura Croft Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie). Unfortunately, my camera died right as we reached this temple. I'll have to put up pictures later, as Natalie and Andrew got some good ones. This temple had crumbling walls of decorated sand stone - this was not usual. The majestic parts were the walls that had amazing white trees stretching into the sky from atop the walls. The roots stretched down on top of and between bricks and the trees didn't seem to mind at all that they were so far from the ground - they spread their branches wide and stretched into the sky. Amazing!

Here are a few pictures from the temples of day two:

faces of deities and kings were carved like this all over several temples

a Cambodian girl practices her baton twirling outside the temple

amazing detail of humans and a deity with only a few pieces missing

these type of mythical lions guard many of the temples at Angkor

I'm not sure if all of the detail is really noticeable in these pictures, but it was constantly amazing to us not only the skill of people hundreds of years ago, but also that there was still so much left today. We only wished that more had been preserved - and of course, that the Khmer Rouge regime had not felt the need to try and wipe out all art, history and culture in their brutal attempt at "socialism".

Each temple was a new world for us to explore, but before entering we had to make our way through the swarms of children/orphans? that tried to sell souvenirs - mainly t-shirts and flutes. They were pushy but beautiful and though we didn't buy anything, we tried to engage them in conversation (English proficiency is amazing!) games and even a little dancing (that was me dancing to the song one little boy played on the flute he was trying to sell me. He did give up on trying to make a sale and we just had fun - it was great!)

It was an excruciatingly hot, but magnificently wonderful day!