Wat a Wonder

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December 29th 2006

Published: February 6th 2007

So after the madness of the last trip i needed some relaxation. Of to Siem Reap i headed on the boat from Phnom Penh. The boat was waaaay over booked so much that the roof of the boat had more people on it than inside on the seats!....."here we go again" i thought. The trip went without incident surprisingly and we passed through a huge lake where you couldnt see either coast line before we reached Siem Reap.
I met a motorbike driver at the dock and agreed he would taxi me around for the next few days for about 8 euro a day. So i fling the bags in the door of a nice hotel and head of to the temples to catch the sunset.
I bought a one day ticket(i should have really bought the 3 day ticket to see the place properly) and after about a 4 mile drive we turned a corner and there it was.......a huge mass of japanese tourists all stampeding up a hill with about 4 cameras, 2 tripods and another camera incase the others broke each......i knew i couldnt be too far away now!!!

We turned another corner and there was Angkor

Temples at Siem Reap

Wat. This building was amazing. So beautiful and huge. It was like looking into the past. It must have been an amazing sight back in its day. So i climb the hill about 1 mile from the temple to see the sunset but it was madness up there! you literally couldnt stand on the hilltop there were 1000s of people there snapping away in a frenzy. You literally had to queue up to take a photo of the sun! Ha can you imaging that! Everyone had travelled 1000s of miles to take a photo of the sun where they can see it from their own back yard.....madness!!!
Anyway the next day the taxi driver took me around all the temples. They were all very beautiful. There were so many and all built so close to eachother. It was an amazing sight.
Finally at the end of the day i arrived at Angkor Wat...the daddy of all the temples. Again there was queueing to get that perfect photo but it was worth it. I went into the temple and there were literally miles of wall carvings of legendary battles, ancient traditions and religious beliefs. It was mind boggling the amount of

Prtying New Years Eve

work that went into it all. Even the moat aroungd the temple was huge and wider than the shannon river. The only thing i regret is not climbing its steps to get to the top of it. The steps were fecking so steep i was dizzy looking up at it and even though kids and old people were running up and down them i couldnt get past my fear of hights and bottled it which was really annoying. Apart from that this truely is a beautiful place and rightly so one of the 7 wonders of the world.

The next night was news years eve. I had tried to get a flight to bangkok for new year but couldnt which was just as well because of the bombs that went off in bangkok. I had the best new years eve party probably ever(much better than in smiths pub tallanstown believe it or not!). I celebrated it with Jin Suk and her friend from south korea, and lad form dublin and a palestinian(you could imagine the drunken conversation and irish man and a palestinian can have! we sorted out so many political problems of the world in about an hour...although

River house outside siem reap

some of the solutions were a bit radical i must admit lookin back on it ha!). Everyone was out on the street partying and drinking their heads off while people from the windows about threw buckets of water on us all night......great craic!!!
Siem Reap is truely a great place to visit.

P.S. Thank you Jin Suk for the photos of Angkor Wat on new years days sunrise. I was passed out on my bed while you were doing all the hard work!!! :o)

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