We set off at 9:00am for Kbal Spean and arrived at 10:30am in blazing heat. Kbal Spean is famous for carvings in the bed of a river, which is a good 40 minute trek from the car park up a well cleared path. Within about 10 minutes I had spotted my first lizard of the day perched elegantly on a vine. It was Calotes versicolor a.k.a. Oriental Garden Lizard or, more bizarrely, the Common Bloodsucker. Presumably the latter name comes from the fact that males have a bright red head and torso in the breeding season. Given the number of brightly coloured males we saw today, I would guess that the breeding season is around now!
Later on we came to clearing, where I saw another three lizards. Male and female Bloodsuckers and one as yet unidentified lizard, which I am fairly sure was a flying lizard (Draco maculatus), as these are found in Cambodia. Another fantastic find for me, and an unmissable photo opp.
Thanks to the leafy roof of the forest, the trek was actually really pleasant and we made it up to the river in no time. We'd been told by our friends Courtney and Dave that there would be a refreshing waterfall awaiting us at the top, but this is the end of the dry season and as such the river wasn't even flowing! This afforded us a great view of the carvings in the river bed, but the waterfall was distinctly lacking. Interestingly most of the carvings are of male fertility symbols, or linga, which essentially look like little domes (imagine the top sliced off a concrete bollard!). There were rows and rows of these carved into the rock and presumably most of them are usually submerged.
It was here that I got my next zoological treat. Given that the river wasn't flowing, all that remained were a number of fairly large, extremely shallow pools in which the water had been died a deep brown from all the tannins leeching out of the fallen leaves. In these pools were several species of fish, but the ones that got me all excited (sad I know!) were the dwarf snakeheads in the Channa genus. I've seen these in aquaria and actually kept a few briefly in my own tanks, so it was incredible to see them in the wild in their natural habitat. I would never in a million years have imagined that they would live quite happily in water so rich in tannins and so low in oxygen, but here they were.
From that point on I was pretty sure we couldn't do any better on the wildlife front, but then on the way back down we came across not one but two Blue Crested lizards (Calotes mystaceus), a male and a female. I would like to include my own photo, but at the moment I don't have the technological requirements, so you'll have to make do with one from Google images. Either way I think it's safe to say that these lizards (even to a non-lizard-enthusiast) are outstandingly beautiful.
THEY MADE MY DAY! I was grinning from ear to ear after that. You can keep your temples, this is what travelling to far flung reaches of the world is all about for me!
Anyway, with that huge success unfer our belts, we ventured onwards to 'the jewel in the crown' that is Banteay Srei - perhaps the most impressive temple in Cambodia for sheer intricacy of stone carving.
For the millionth time we were left speechless. You just have to see Banteay Srei to understand how mind-blowing the carvings are. It's insane that people were able to produce such beautiful carvings without any of the electronic machinery we use today. Just an amazing place - you'll have to wait for photos, as I didn't take any from my phone and those are the easiest to upload right now.
From Banteay Srei we headed back to the main Angkor complex to check out one more temple (Pre Rup) before walking up Bakheng Hill to catch sunset. At Pre Rup we bumped into Manuel again! He'd hired a moto (motorbike taxi) for the day and had been busy seeing as many temples as possible. We chatted briefly before he had to carry on and we climbed back down from the top to seek out the perfect angle for a photo.
Unfortunately it was soon after this that the clouds started rolling in, so as we got to the bottom of Bakheng Hill you couldn't even see the sun. What you could see were the lovely elephants they have there, who looked very well looked after indeed and had some very fancy wooden chairs set on their backs (you can pay $20 to ride an elephant up the hill for the sunset). Beautiful looking animals and different to the elephants we had seen in Thailand in that they seemed smaller and had much darker skin.
In the end there was no sunset to be had from the top. We took a few photos up there to capture the impressive view, but decided to maximise our pool time back at the hotel and call it a day.
We headed back to the hotel for a refreshing dip and then left the Central Boutique to check out another recommendation: drinks in the bar at the Raffles d'Angkor hotel. A quick stroll later and we were in the Elephant Bar in the hotel, which is a jolly fine place to be. We ordered two scrumptious cocktails and were presented with two enormous bowls of snacks. The first was bite-sized crispy rice cakes served with curry sauce, the second was full of cassava crisps. Eating both bowls would certainly have constituted a decent meal for two adults.
They have a free pool table in the bar, so I challenged Amber to a game. We're both terrible at pool, so it was only down to the fact that statistically if you take enough shots you will eventually pot the requisite number of balls that I just managed to win. I don't think the bar staff had ever seen such incompetence round a pool table. They were most amused.
Following on from our visit to Elephant Bar we headed in search of a restaurant called Curry Walla for dinner. The food there is Bangladeshi in origin and I have to say it was very tasty indeed, especially the tamarind chutney.
No comments:
Post a Comment