Another Eventful Day in Siem Reap
By Lauren Gerzina & Justin Hayes
More Temples, Foot Massages, and Superhero Rats
Since we bought a 3-day ticket to visit the ancient Angkor area (our only options were 1,3, and 7 – but 1 didn’t seem like it would be enough), we decided to get up early to visit more temples before the heat of the day set in. We were picked up by a tuktuk driver that the hotel set up at 7am to do the “Grand Circuit tour.” By 7:30 we were in Angkor and at our first stop.
Here are some brief descriptions/things we noticed about each stop:
Preah Khan Temple
This temple (which was more like a mini-city) was dedicated to the father of the popular King Jayavarman VII and was large and beautiful, with 2.5m tall garudas on the outer wall and bridges depicting (you guessed it) the churning of the ocean of milk. This temple was in much worse shape than any of the ones we had seen on our first Angkor tour. There were tons of large fallen bricks everywhere – many completely blocking passage through the labyrinth of rooms/ halls.
Neak Poun
Neak Poun is a mystical island temple which is located on an island within an island. Island-ception, if you will. In order to visit the temple, we had to walk along a long bridge from the main road in Angkor onto a small island with only a few walking paths. This temple was originally only accessible by boat. We followed the main path to get to the edge of a moat surrounding the tiny temple (also with 4 tiny temples in the cardinal locations surrounding it). This temple was very peaceful with almost no visitors. It was built by King Jayavarman VII as one of his many hospitals and was based on a mythical healing lake with the regenerative power of the naga.
Ta Som
This temple was very tiny – we could walk from one gate entrace to the other in about 5 min. It was flat and mostly characterized by a beautiful tree that grew out of the temple’s eastern entrance.
Quick digression from our temple tour. When we left Ta Som, we noticed there was a shop run by locals that sold artwork. So, of course, we walked over to see what they have. We found a piece that both of us loved and bought it for about 20 less than we had seen any of that size in the market the night before. Our only problem for the rest of the trip – getting it home. Spoiler alert: we were able to get it in our large suitcase at an angle.
Eastern Mabon
Eastern Mabon was perhaps our favorite to visit from this 2nd day of the tour. It has some beautiful elephant and lion sculptures surrounding the main temple (and they all had their heads!). With only a few steps up to the top, the temple had some amazing views of the surrounding jungle. The other interesting thing we noticed is that the lintels (headers above the entrances to each room) were ornate and in VERY good shape. They seemed to be a different material than the lintels we had seen before, and that seemed to work out well for them.
Pre Rup
This temple was SUPER tall. To get to the top, we had to take VERY steep, shallow steps. And of course, they were not consistent heights – some steps were taller than knee height. It was not fun to climb for our last stop as it had gotten very hot and humid by this time. It had spectacular views of the jungle, of course, but the heat after the long climb was rough.
Each of these temples was beautiful and unique, and we were so glad we got to visit more than just the original 3 that most tourists see. After Pre Rup, we headed back to the hotel to get out of the heat of the day.
Lunch and Massage
We didn’t stay in the hotel for long, as we needed to get some laundry done. Lauren found a laundromat that can turn laundry in less than 24 hours for $1.25/kg. So we took a tuk tuk with 5.5kg of laundry to this laundromat (which had 200 reviews! – who knew people liked to review laundromats?). We then walked about 10 min to a “western” café for lunch (Source Café) and chilled for a bit, working on getting some pictures uploaded to our blog (the Wifi in the hotel was atrocious). The food was very good.
While we were having lunch, Lauren found a highly rated place to get a foot massage that was nearby, so we walked over to enjoy a one-hour foot massage, which was nice after a couple of days of walking through temples.
Apopo Hero Rats
After lunch, we decided to take a tuk tuk to the Apopo Visitor Center. This place came highly recommended by one of the passengers on our Ha Long Bay cruise. Apopo is a nonprofit organization that specializes in training African pouched rats to locate landmines.
After bombing from the U.S. and totalitarian rule under the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia is still overrun with landmines and unexploded bombs, making the countryside extremely dangerous and deadly for farmers. Locating the landmines has proven difficult over time as many have become buried or degraded, but still active. Humans could only locate them with metal detectors, but metal detectors could not distinguish between the mines and other scrap metal, making it a grueling and time consuming process to locate the mines.
Enter Apopo. Apopo figured out that you could train African pouched rats to locate the smell of TNT with behavioral conditioning. These rats live a lot longer – up to 9 years – than other rats and so can be trained during youth and hunt for mines for 4 or 5 years as adults. Unlike humans or dogs, the rats are too small to trigger the mines, so they can locate them without causing explosions or shrapnel.
At the Apopo center, we learned how the rats locate the mines and about their training process. Essentially, the humans will figure out a suspected land mine area. They will create a perimeter around it and then one human will stand on one side while another human will stand on another with a rope running between them, attached to their legs. The rats will be harnessed and attached to the rope, going back and forth along the area as the humans walk parallel to each other down the line. When the rat scratches at the ground, this means they have detected TNT and are rewarded. They let the rat go one more time to see if it will alert again before they mark down the exact area where the mine was found.
In certain areas where this isn’t possible due to trees/forests, Apopo also uses dogs. But they have also trained the rats to detect tuberculosis in places like Tanzania. The rats can process hundreds of samples in minutes compared to traditional tests, which can take several days.
It truly is an amazing organization, and we will likely donate to them so they can continue their humanitarian work.
Dinner and Dessert
After our tour, we headed back to the hotel to chill for a bit and then get ready for dinner. We took a tuk tuk to a place called Haven, which was recommended by the Find Me Gluten Free app. We didn’t have a reservation, so they sat us at a high top near the kitchen, which was fine. Our server was a nice Swiss woman, who we later found out co-owned the restaurant with her husband. They opened the restaurant as a “haven” to provide training and opportunities for troubled young people in Siem Reap. It also had delicious food and they were very helpful with Justin’s allergies. They also had this dark chocolate sorbet that was absolutely incredible.
To end the night, we wanted to check out a cocktail bar near Pub Street called Asana Old Wooden House, which was literally an old wooden house that was built (re-built?) in an alley way. Justin had a black rice whiskey old fashioned and Lauren had a Khmer-herbed gin cocktail. It was a very cool vibe, but we both were feeling pretty tired from our long day so decided to call it a night after our drinks.
