Cambodia: Siem Reap - Banteay Samre and Banteay Srei.

We took Airasia to Siem Reap, and the choice of flight time is limited, we had a mid night flight so when we reached Siem Reap, that was only 7am. 

We don't wanna waste a day, yet we don't wanna to walk a whole day in Angkor Wat or Angkor Thom, so i make remote temples to be our activity of the day, since we only visited 3 temples and we will spend 2 hours in car, we can take a quick nap before explore the place.

As i had mentioned in the last post, about how to find a driver or tuk tuk, we actually hired the one who send us to the hotel on our arrival. 

He asked for USD100 but we told him that we're not goin to tonle sap lake (aka the yellow water river and the water village) , Phnom Kulen (the waterfall) and the Kbal Spean (ancient Hindu pilgrimage site in jungle), we only want to see Banteay Srei, Banteay Samre, Bang Melea and some part of Rulous Group, so he charge us USD70 for rent his car, the road tax (i guess that is the toll money to Bang Melea) and let him drive us to the places, exclude guiding. 

We check into the hotel and had simple breakfast, then we departed to Banteay Samre around 9am. 

As Banteay Samre is the first temple that we visited in Siam Reap, we feel everything is nice and good, but shame that we didn't hire a guide, we didn't know the story of the temple.

But John is happy enough, as i said, he likes everything that bigger than him, haha. 

The driver drop us in an alley with temple controller guiding in the entrance. 

                             

Little child everywhere to ask you buy something. My advice is don't buy or give them money, this is encouraging them to quit from school and earn money in their earlier age. 

                            

The temple is in good maintenance, but some restoration work has been done.  

one of the corner

small door design to make people go in with their head down to show respect. 

I can never imagine how this art work been done by hand. 

where am seeing is what the people seeing in thousands year ago. 

We spent about an hour in Banteay Samree (the temple is not big, but John spent age to take a photo), then we went to Banteay Srei, the most beautiful wall carvings art work among all the temples, this is also one of our favourite temples. 

river surrounding the temple for defend from the enemy. 

the wall carvings is so detail that you cant believe this is done in thousand year ago. 

accurate distance, size and angles of the door, people done without measuring technology in the past time. 

the walk way from the front door to the gallery and library. 

One close up photo of the carving. 

tour guide of other visitor says this is about the story of temples.

some part closed down for restoration and maintenance. 

but the wall carves are all original 

this is the mini temples inside of Banteay Srei

with very detail deco. 

and they're standing here for thousand years already, how amazing?

We went to lunch before we go to Bang Melea, my most favourite temple in the place, and that will be in next post coz lots of photos. 

Oh about the lunch, the driver bring us to a road side restaurant without asking what we wanted to eat, we ordered a fried rice and fried noodle with the price of USD 5 of each, which is very expensive and the food is suck and small portion, but i guess there have no other choice if you hire a taxi. 

Alright stay tuned for my next post. See ya! 

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 

20130109, 1053am

Rach in goin to work soon mood.