After Angkor Wat, we headed to Phnom Bakheng for the sunset. We’re not big fans of sunsets, preferring the sunrise to a sunset any day, but why miss a chance to view another temple. Phnom Bakheng is a temple dedicated to Lord Shiva.
There were two choices to get to the temple: an elephant ride up the temple ($25 per person) or walk up a not-so-steep path for ~20 minutes. We chose the latter. Once we got to the top of the hill, there were already a lot of people. We went up the crazySteps again. While climbing the steps, my camera was dangling from my neck and there came Dara’s quip: Please take care of your camera, it can hurt my stone.
At the top, you can pay a dollar to use the binoculars to get a closer view of Angkor Wat and two other mountains. Along with Phnom Bakheng, these two mountains represent the “trimurti”. We could not get enough of the Hindu/Buddhist stories that Dara told us, and how the temples were all constructed. After a while, we found a nice spot to sit, right by a shiv-ling and we chatted about life, religious beliefs and humanity. It was a really nice conversation.
After the sunset, we tried to rush down to beat the crowd and then Dara dropped us back at our hotel. By this time, I was getting in a bad shape with my stomach and had a severe diarrhea. We called Heena’s dad who used to be a pharmacist and he gave us the name of a tablets and their chemical composition. We then went to local pharmacy and got the tablets and they helped immensely. Dinner was at Chivit Thai. The food was good, but I was in no mood to eat and was feeling miserable. We walked over to Dara’s home (which was around the corner from our hotel) and let him know that we’d like the car to come a little later the next day. I wanted to rest and see how I feel in the morning. We went back to the hotel and I decided I’d had enough of stomach trouble and headed straight to bed.
This post is a part of the Thailand, Laos and Cambodia 2007 itinerary
