Travel Virus

The main tourist attraction of Cambodia is Angkor, the ancient capital and city of thousands of Khmer temples. Millions tourists come every year but it doesn’t fee like. The temples site is so huge that you only find some crowd in Angkor Wat, the most famous temple. We went there for sunrise, but the sun was shy that day and didn’t show up. Never mind it’s still good to explore the temples at 6 in morning when the air is fresh and not many people are around.

My favorite temple is Ta Phrom, wild and conquered by the forest… feels like Indiana Jones discovering forgotten treasures! It’s amazing to see the huge trees growing around, inside and on the top of the temples!

Bayon is also one of the must see temples, with thousand faces looking at you, very picturesque!

Banteay Srey, also called the women citadel, is a temple complex 38 Km from Angkor Wat, but worth the trip: it’s made of pink sandstone with very fine and minute carving, extremely rich in details.

Overall all the temples are beautiful and different from each other but on the same artistic line, some Hindu, some Buddhist, some very tall, some very large…

What is amazing about Angkor is the huge number of temples spread in an area of around a hundred kilometers, there are beautifully carved temples at every corner, often hiding under the greenish forest, the atmosphere is unique, reminiscence of the Khmer splendor.

Since the climax in XXI century ,Cambodia has been subject to continuous decline, touching the bottom with the Khmer rouge regime. In 1979, when Pol Pot regime felt under the Vietnamese army, there were only 300 people left in Cambodia with a higher degree (Henry Kamm, 1988, pg.11). Emerging from the stone age is not easy when in a whole Country there are only 300 educated people, and schools and hospitals were destroyed when not used for tortures and mass killing. Khmer people are now slowly recovering from the hell where Pol Pot took them only 30 years ago, but it’s a long way that needs international support.