Adventures in a Jeep, to Siem Reap and back

Saturday I headed north, bound for Siem Reap and all kinds of Indiana Jones/Lara Croft fun. Outside Siem Reap lies Angkor Vat in all its glory, along with many, many other exciting temples and ruins. Enough ruins to keep you going for days. Before we left, a friend made a comment along the lines of "How much do you like rocks?" He couldn't have been more right, but, as it turns out, I like rocks a lot! Except for the fact that the evil Nazi's didn't show up, temple demons didn't attack me, no booby traps made attempts at my life, and no awesome treasure was to be found, it was all I dreamed it could be.

Now, Indy never pulled up to those awesome temples in an air conditioned tourist bus, did he? No, of course not. So could I possibly conceive to do just that? Not a chance. I needed a sweet ride to carry me to my archaeological expedition. It just so happens that my new friend Isaac has that sweet ride, an old military Jeep complete with no doors, shovel bolted to one side, axe bolted to the other (until someone stole it), and gas can bolted to the back. He offered to take me to Siem Reap in it. I didn't even have to ask! This thing is so awesome that we caught Japanese tourists posing for pictures with it once.

We set out Saturday for what should have been 6 hours on the road. 9 hours later, we pulled into town. Why the extra three hours? Well, those would be courtesy of the two flat tires along the way. Even better, it was just one tire's inner tube that conveniently decided to pop twice, in different locations. Thank goodness for nice people on the side of the road, people who can patch tires in their back yards, and Isaac's fluent grasp of the Khmer language. I swear, I offered to help, but after being told it wasn't necessary, I documented instead.

Trying to change the first flat out for the spare.

Patching the first flat. This process was repeated shortly down the road.

After our adventure with tires on Saturday, I got a good night's sleep and was ready to tackle Angkor and all it could throw at me. I won't write much, as the pictures have much more to say than I do. I will say that it was an amazing, awe inspiring, impressive day. I had so much fun exploring hand etched hallways, crawling through tiny doorways and windows, scrambling over tons of upturned stone, discovering fantastic carvings, and simply marveling at what these ancient peoples were able to create oh so many years ago (we're talking the 1100's here folks.)

Angkor Vat (too bad about the restoration scaffolding)

Standing in one of the stone archways at Angkor.

Stone etching of a devote hindu. The temples were both Buddhist and Hindu, depending on who had won recently :-)

Angkor tower

Temple gate

A corridor in the 2nd temple of the day

Self portrait in that corridor

Temple 2 had these four faced towers all over it

3rd temple, long ago reclaimed by the jungle

Me in a destroyed hallway of temple 3

5th temple of the day. This is what happens when you neglect the yard work.

There, you have now seen just a few of the, ahem, nearly 275 pictures I took while there. Heh heh, couldn't be helped! I just realized that I forgot to load a shot of the 4th temple, which is too bad because it was equally impressive in it's own unique way. Also, if I can get the appropriate names of the above mentioned temples, I'll update the blog.

My awesome exploits concluded today with a fairly uneventful drive back to Phnom Penh. Thankfully, no more flat tires. Only one thing marked today as different from any other day of travel, and that's the fact that I drove! Yep, that's right folks, Kate was behind the wheel of the superbly awesome Jeep on the streets of Cambodia. Come on, it doesn't get much better than that.