This post was the most difficult to write – it took me far longer than expected. Throughout our stay in Cambodia we were surprised on a daily basis and deeply shocked a few times. Ultimately, if you ever end up in SE Asia, travelling to Cambodia is a no-brainer. Just come prepared…. please read until the end…

The temples you see around Siem Reap are breathtaking. It is beyond belief that some of them were built over 1,000 years ago. The detailing, the astrological layouts and the symbolism around are everywhere you look. And the stories… we were never properly introduced to Hindu or Buddhism cultures and their mythology. Listening to our guide (this time we opted in for a couple of days of private tours) describing how the world was created and who all the different gods were was an eye opening experience. We will never become experts (and might have gotten this or that wrong), but you’ll find some of our favourite ones along with the photos (just click through the photos for descriptions).

East entrance to the biggest and most famous temple – Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat in its full glory – it means “City of Temples”
Beautiful Apsara dancers – some of the most esteemed once lived with the king in the palace
All temple stairs were very steep. This served dual purpose – 1) support of the temple structure and 2) to show that getting to heaven should be an uphill (literally) battle
The echo chamber. The idea is that you make a wish and thump your chest while leaning on the wall to release the sound
A classic Angkor Wat shot (our tour guide was very particular about that one)…At the heart of each temple, the central sanctuary tower or towers (most commonly five of them, arranged in the characteristic “quincunx” pattern, like the five dots on a dice) represents the mythical Mount Meru, considered the home of the gods and the heart of the physical and spiritual universe in both Hindu and Buddhist cosmology.
Center of the universe… and we are in the middle of it 😀
The main West entrance to Angkor Wat with a raised walkway for the king (the commoners had a separate entrance to the complex and could walk beside the main path). Naga (serpent) handrails visible everywhere through all the temples.
Angkor Wat was dedicated to Vishnu who is the supreme God in the Vaishnavite tradition of Hinduism and venerated as one of the five primary forms of God. This standing stone statue has eight arms and the head of Buddha. When Angkor Wat became a Buddhist temple, the head of Vishnu was replaced with the head of Buddha.
Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth, fortune and prosperity. She is the wife and shakti (energy) of Vishnu.
Naga handrails – they are everywhere!
The main gate to Ankgor Thom – the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer empire. Each gate is crowned with 4 giant faces and framed by elephants wading amongst lotus flowers.
God Indra riding on a 3 headed elephant with sea creatures climbing up the trunks
Bayon temple with 54 towers and 4 faces on each tower. – each one is different and they are all smiling as the kingdom is prosperous and happy. Closed eyes represent meditation and the achievement of the state of Enlightenment. And here? Maya kissing the king. Some of the faces depicted Jayavarman himself, as they bear an uncanny resemblance to other images of the king.
Buddhist monk (characteristic by the hand placement during meditation) sitting on and protected by the 7 headed serpent – Naga. Here the head is in place but usually they are missing as they were cut off and stolen during many wars (the majority of heads throughout the complex are missing)
We spent 2 hours to wait for the sunrise and reserve a good spot.
You can see the effects of us waking at 4.30am…
Dancing Hall
Man-made Kings reservoir used to water the fields during dry season
Horse helping traders cross the water (you can see one of them holding onto the mane)
2 Nagas supporting the temple – you could see the heads on the left and the tail on the right of the main building.
Entrance to the “hospital” where you could be cured using holy water.
East Baray temple guarded by elephants on each corner. They are all made out of single slab of stone.
Original blind door in its full glory. They have never been restored and preserved flawlessly.
The cone shaped towers are hollow inside and have been built in similar fashion to the pyramids.
In Hindu tradition, Rahoo is the severed head of an asura demon called Svarbhānu, that swallows the sun causing eclipses. He is depicted in art as a serpent with no body. He stole and drunk a few drops of holy water which was enough to make the head immortal but in anger the gods cut of his head from the rest of the body.
Gosia attempting to cross 7 oceans and 7 mountain to gain absolution…
Got tired of people taking pics of Maya without permission so I started taking pics of them in return.
Tuk tuk power nap
Our tour guide explaining the carvings in the gallery – they depict demons holding the head of the snake, which was spitting furiously, while the gods held the tail end. The serpent was then coiled around the mountain. Each side alternately pulled the rope then allowed it to relax, causing the mountain to rotate in the water. This was used by god Vishnu to recover lost treasure (elixir of immortality and goddess Lakshmi).
Kurma, or Turtle, is the second incarnation of Hindu God Vishnu. This Avatar was taken by Vishnu to help the Devas acquire the Amruta, or elixir of life, during the Samudra Manthan or churning of the ocean.The Devas (Gods) took hold of the tail of Vasuki and the Asuras (Demons) took hold of the mouth the snake. But as Mandara Mountain had no fixation (below or above) it started to sink down. Sri Hari Vishnu then took the form of a turtle or Kurma and lifted the mountain on his back and kept the mountain in the right position and made it possible for the churning of the ocean or Samudra Manthan to take place.
Szymon was hunting for a shot like this for 3 days. This is our final farewell with the temples so a lucky break 🙂
Ornamented window blinds – there should be 7 by design which is an important number in Hindu and Buddhist mythology
Garuda is a divine being that is part man and part bird. He is the lord of birds, the mythologial enemy of nāgas, and the battle steed of Vishnu. Garuda is often depicted in relief against the fan of nāga heads. The relationship between Garuda and the nāga heads is ambiguous in these sculptures: it may be one of cooperation, or it may again be one of domination of the nāga by Garuda.

We tried to embrace the tradition and got a reading from a monk at one of the temples (for a $1 of course). We got blessed with holy water (the water is “holy” as in never saw sunlight = from a well) and were supposed to pick a single page from the ancient bible. We capitulated on the fifth try… apparently all of them were just bad news. From what we could understand, one of the stories was about a man who killed his pig and took to the market to sell – and no one came to buy… And another one about a mother, who left her baby at home and went off to find food for the family. She managed to return just in time to rescue her child from a blazing fire… This one was particularly troubling, as throughout Vietnam and Cambodia I was attending telephone and WhatsApp interviews for a job back home…. Needless to say, I got the job, so let’s not be prejudicial and just wait and see what the future brings!

While in Angkor we had an (almost) close encounter with celebrities. Not only have we visited the overgrown temple from The Tomb Raider (btw, look how bad the trailer is!), but we missed Angelina Jolie by an hour! She was just about to arrive for screening of her new movie First They Killed My Father, in the Angkor Wat ruins. The screening was attended by the Cambodian royal family, who we passed on the airport the following day!

from the left: Tomb Raider / Indiana Jones / Dora the Explorer
Brave Maya in the grip of Strangler Fig tree.
Royal family leaving after the premiere

One thing they do not tell you about Cambodia is how expensive it is. The local currency (Riel) is very weak (and the notes are literally falling apart as you hold them), which means that everything is priced in USD… and the prices are at London level. Coming from unbelievably cheap and true Vietnam, where you could get a feast of local specialties for £5, to a place which just felt like one giant tourist trap, three levels of prices (tourist, expat and local) and aspiring restaurants serving complicated dishes at astronomical prices. In the 5 days we travelled through Cambodia we spent more on food than in a week in New York. Ridiculous. And all this is surrounded by devastating poverty. A shocking experience.

And as we travelled into Phnom Penh it got even worse. The city itself is just like all other capitals in this part of the world – very big, dirty but rapidly developing and with an overwhelming feeling you are not safe or welcome here. This is contrasted by gold and architecturally striking temples and palaces. We stayed in a hotel in centre of town where the room we got presented with, while on 10th floor had no windows and no one could understand why I was complaining. The whole thing just didn’t feel right.

What really struck us during this visit was how failed Polish educational system is. History lessons start with ancient Greece and by the time you get to XX century you’ve run out of time… This way we were never taught about anything that happened in the world after Second World War. It might have been our ignorance, but I vaguely remember the trials of Pol Pot a few years ago but never truly knew what it was all about. Well, until spending a few days in Phnom Penh and visiting one the prisons (S21). If there is a way to run a history lesson this is it… I had enough and was ready to leave after 15 min. I will never be a historian, so forgive my simplification, but what happened in Cambodia in 1970s just doesn’t seem to get out of my mind.

After years of occupation and devastating civil wars the country finally got liberated in 1975. Within 3 hours after the celebratory welcoming of Khmer Rouge army on the streets on Phnom Penh people got evicted from large cities into the countryside. They got minutes to pack – they were told the army needs to clear the towns from explosives (and told that more American bombings were imminent) and they will be back in no time. Needless to say, it never happened. This moment became the Year Zero, the beginning of the new world. Khmer Rouge carried out a radical program that included isolating the country from all foreign influences, closing schools, hospitals, and factories, abolishing banking, finance, and currency, outlawing all religions, confiscating all private property. It was the beginning of implementation of their master-plan for making Cambodia great again. The idea was to make it into an agricultural utopia – people (regardless of status, education and knowledge) were forced to work on the rice fields in labour camps to try to meet the expected quota from each hectare. How would you feel if someone has done this to you – would you even know how to go about it? But that was only part of the story. More people means higher costs. Khmer Rouge estimated they needed only 2m people to achieve their goal. This meant the remaining population of the country was obsolete. They had to go following the party’s motto To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.

We both spent a couple of hours in S21, one of the prisons used during that time (there were 106 throughout the country). People were brought there without any specific reason – their name just “came up”. Then the true bureaucracy of death began. Detailed records for each prisoner were created, photos taken, ID numbers assigned. Then they were tortured (I will spare you the details) until they admitted their involvement with KGB, CIA or other institution they never even heard of. Sometimes this took days, sometimes months. And some of them didn’t make it through the torture – and this became the proof that the staff at the facility were involved. And in a split second from an oppressor they themselves became prisoners… Once the confession was signed the prisoners were transported to Killing Fields – mass graves just outside of town, where they were bashed with rods until they died. Bullets were too expensive.  Only 7 people survived out of 14,000 to 20,000 that were brought to S21 for processing, torture and ultimately death either there or in one of the Killings Fields. We just couldn’t face going to see this as well….

Two points to add, to make it all clearer…

This happened only 40 years ago, quite far away from the western civilisation, just after American failed attempts in Vietnam. It took 4 years. No one wanted to get involved. Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge managed to exterminate 25% of the population of their own country and no one seems to have said a thing. The party itself got only disbanded in late 1990’s and the formal trials started in 2007.

The prison I talked about before – I missed out one crucial fact. It wasn’t a prison. It was a high school. Just like the one I went to as a teenager. But with classrooms converted into hastily built cells and schools equipment used as torture devices. With subjects of the last lesson still written on blackboards in each of the torture rooms. The feeling when you walk around is one of the most overwhelming I have ever felt. The whole thing is just beyond belief…

“Bureaucracy of death” – rules for the prisoners of S21 secret compound
Guards used school equipment in the yard to torture the prisoners (by hanging them upside down) but were not allowed to kill them until they got confessions and Brother Number 2 – Duch gave the order. If guards killed somebody by mistake they too became the prisoners.
Barbed wire was added in Block C to prevent people from jumping out to commit suicide.
Another classroom turned into set of tiny holding cells. They broke through the wall to patrol the area and see if somebody was misbehaving. Prisoners were fed one bowl of porridge a day and were given a metal container (previously used to hold bullets) to relieve themselves.
Prisoners were held in tiny cells – they had no doors as everybody was shackled to the floor and tortured up to 3 times a day for “confessions” and total submission.

Was it worth it – yes, without a doubt. Would I do it again – again, no question about it. But just be aware, the history is everywhere around you. And it’s quite overwhelming. Let’s make sure it doesn’t repeat itself…