Siem Reap- Angkor Wat

One cannot go to Cambodia, let alone Siem Reap without visiting the Unesco World Heritage site of Angkor Wat and the surrounding area. We did as everyone should and set out for some temple visiting!

While we were on  Koh Rong Samloem Island, we met two charming men (father and son) Nicolas and Théo from Bretagne. They had already been to Siem Reap and recommended we visit the sites by tuk tuk over 3 days and shared the contact of the driver they had come upon and really appreciated. So this is what we did.

It's hard to explain the feeling of walking and exploring these ancient sites, trying to imagine all the work that was put into their construction and how it could have looked while it was thriving. With out going into details on everything we read and saw in these different sites, here are a few facts that struck us in Angkor Wat more specifically:

• Over 50 000 elephants were used to haul the stone that was cut out from the mountains sometimes as far as 80 km away. each stone weighing several hundred kilos!
• Over 300 000 people participated in the construction over 37 years!
• Towards the end of the 12th century, Angkor was one of the biggest cities in the world with nearly 1 million inhabitants over 1500km2! To put this into perspective, at the same period their were only 50 000  people living in London!! 
• 287 temples have been identified in the Angkor site.

Here are images of our visits. Better images than words :)

Tohas, our tuk tun driver, also took us out to visit a floating village on the shore of the Tonlé Sap lake. 

It isn't floating per say, but the houses here are built on high stilts. The rainy season rises the level of water of the Tonlé Sap by several meters annually. Although the stilts appeared super high while we were there, we could see the signs of water left up high on some of the posts and therefore witness the necessity for the height! We were told that when the water is at it's highest, villagers move around by boat as the roads are clearly submerged at this time. They laugh that during this time they can actually fish right from the comfort of their kitchen! LOL

Some of the houses, a bit further away from the lake are on lower stilts but still see the water level reach up right underneath there living space

From the Tonlé Sap, a river runs up and divides the village in two. There is a lot of activity on this river!

A few less fortunate families cannot afford a house. They live on their boat, afloat during the wet season and on land when the water is low like now.

We witnessed here, first hand, that it doesn't take much to be happy. We took a video of these children playing (with a lot of talent I must add) a game using available items... chop sticks and something that serves as a ball.  They were soo happy to show off their talent!

The objective is to pick up the chop sticks in increasing groups. initially 2 at a time, then 3... until 10 in one time. The pick up must happen while the ball is in the air so in a fraction of time! If the amount of sticks picked up is inaccurate, it's the other one's turn. Same if the ball is dropped. First to finish 2-10 consecutively wins!

These littles ones wanted to see a picture of themselves. The giggles we got from them as they where looking back at themselves on the camera :)

We also saw the tedious work of these women. 

They clean these tiny fish, decapitate them and then put them on sticks brochette style (4-6 per stick). They are then placed on racks and set out to dry in the sun for several hours. They are then smoked for a few hours in a smoke house to finally be sold at the market. Each brochet made gives them a revenu of approximately $0.01..it's soo little!! ​