We finished up wandering through Angkor Wat. Even with the quantity of tourists that get toted through on the buses, that stepping off the smaller circuit gave us temples, jungle and ruins completely devoid of humans.
Our favorite spot was Preah Khan. This was an incredible temple that is reputed to be a base for past festivals. Crumbling walls, oversized trees and intricate carvings covered with green and white lichen. If you have any middle ages festival romanticism lurking in you, you can go overboard in conjuring up what the world must have been like under the watchful eyes of the smiling personas carved into the stone walls.
The sounds of the place are just amazing. We stood under a tree as an afternoon thunderstorm let up. We found out quickly why there is a high season (lower temperatures that don’t cause to you spontaneously melt while standing in the shade), a psuedo-low season (our current state of 95 degree temperatures and 95% humidity… very jungle-ly feeling) and the real low season (torential rain for about an hour a day turning the ground into red mud… that can create the effect of standing in an outdoor steam sauna). The insight into the real low season did have additional bonuses for our mid-day, it cleared out the other sightseerers for the remainder of the afternoon, reduced the temperatures and eventually vanished leaving everything sparkling clean (except for our feet).
The sounds of a thunderstorm traveling above the jungle canopy is an exotic soundscape to experience. As the rains disappeared the birds of the area took over and hooted, called and echoed all around us. The guidebook referred to a nature preserve nearby called the Bird Sanctuary and Biosphere of Prek Toal and it went on to describe it during the dry season of December through May.. “a concentration of birds something out of a Hitchcock film.” Given that we were standing in the midst of a jungle that sees many visitors and thus probably scares away a far numbered of feathered friends, we could easily believe that the park might make you feel like a two-footed minority on the planet. Much better to go deaf from bird calls than a two-stroke tuk-tuk engine.
We are considering heading over to Bangkok and getting the dust out of our clothes and pores soon.
