We woke up early to eat breakfast and meet our tuk-tuk driver at 7:30 AM. We decided a further excursion today. Our first stop was Banteay Srei. A tiny shrine carves out of pink sandstone, the detailing was amazingly intricate and mostly intact. I enjoyed it immensely even though it was a quick walkthrough. Next stop was Kbal Spean, a creek in the mountains with Hindu deities carved into the rocks, discovered the late 1960s. It was a 1.5km hike uphill through the forest just to get to it. It was hot but fun to hear the monkeys hollering in the distance. The carvings and creek where nice but it was still very much rainy season so the water level was raised above most of the carvings.
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| Banteay Srei - my favorite of the shrines |
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| Banteay Srei |
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| Banteay Srei detail carvings |
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| Banteay Srei with monkey sentinels |
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| Banteay Srei |
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| Detailed carvings at Banteay Srei |
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| Carved river bedrock at Kbal Spean |
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| Kbal Spean |
The sky was rumbling by the time we got back to the tuk-tuk. We started on to the next stop, Beng Mealea, having to stop multiple times to take rain covers on and off. We stopped for lunch at Beng Mea Lea kitchen, rather expensive for Cambodia but air-conditioned, which is always refreshing, and out in the middle of nowhere. Finally, at Beng Mealea, we spent a little over an hour exploring the toppled temple. It has been left intentionally in it's 'first discovered' state, all toppled over. However, with the wooden walkways to get around, there's no more climbing around like there used to be. But it's definitely more interactive with stairs up and down, dark passageways, and rock hopping across ponds. It was beautiful in its own right. Our poor driver had to drive us 2.5 hr back, I felt bad about it but he insisted it wasn't a problem and I was relieved to see we weren't the only tuk-tuk riders out there.
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| Beng Mealea |
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| Beng Mealea |
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| Swamp in Beng Mealea |
The ride back was beautiful with many heavy rain showers we rode in and out of. The little village children would run around screaming in the rain. Whenever our driver stopped to take off or put on rain cover, they'd meander over to smile and stare at us. At some point, while I was looking down at a map, a black bug of some sort hit me in the face below my left eye and stung or bit me. I could immediately feel a rush of pressure and fluid movement to the area. I was hoping I wouldn't swell up too bad or anywhere near my airway. Luckily I had hydrocortisone cream with me so I smeared the area and held an ice-cold water bottle from Wana's ice chest over it. After a few moments, it felt much better and I didn't have any swelling to worry about. Thank goodness it was not near my throat or mouth!!
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| Children bringing the water buffalo home |
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| Cambodian countryside |
We got back to the hotel at 4:45PM, just in time for sunset so we bought a couple Cambodia beers at the bar and headed up to the top balcony to watch the sunset. It was quickly taken over by a dark thundercloud so we watched the rain thunder down and the lightning flashed. The first thundercloud was taken over by a second, larger cloud and the weather got even wilder! Eventually, we went in to shower and dress for dinner. It was still raining but less heavily when we stepped out, the brunt of the cloud had moved to the southeast and the lightning strikes there were still lighting up the sky almost every 30 seconds! We ate dinner at Hot Rod, which had a great atmosphere, great drinks, and amazing peanuts for free. Drink prices were rather expensive, though, and the food had much room for improvement.
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| Riding into Siem Reap |
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| Enjoying thunder showers from the hotel balcony |
We wandered down to the 'Made In Cambodia' market where items truly designed and made in Cambodia where sold. But the market was smaller than I imagined and nothing caught my eye so we walked back home to relax. The rain had stopped at this point but the lightning flashes continued in the east, back-lighting the dramatic clouds, well until 10PM.
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| Siem Reap Night Market |
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| Siem Reap Night Market |
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