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Published: August 9th 2007
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Angkor Temples
A short, bumpy bus ride northwards and you hit Cambodia’s main tourist town: Siem Reap - gateway to the Angkor temples.
We hired a Tuk Tuk for the entire day, rising at 5am to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat (in the company of thousands of other tourists) and then spent the rest of the day walking through the incredible 12th century ruins. (Actually, it’s probably more than that, 11th to 14th Century or something).
All the temples were awe-inspiring feats of workmanship, but we’ll let our pictures do the talking this time.
The Road Onwards
Now the road from Siem Reap to Thailand is a road only in the loosest sense of the word. In fact, we’d go so far as to say it is simply a path devoid of grass due to all modes of transport heading in the same direction. Rumour has it that certain airlines pay certain governments to refrain from repairing (or rather, building) the road, for obvious reasons.
Holding true to our flashpacker status, we decided that this was the one journey we could do without and even chose to risk a flight on the dreaded Lao Airlines…Gasp! (We
Our backpacks providing the support
for the crappy fold-down middle seats. Calling the seats uncomfortable would be too kind. can imagine Andrew shaking his head in despair. His one comment to us was: “Don’t fly Lao Airlines!”) As fate (or Andrew’s secret agents) would have it, all flights were full for the whole week, so we had no other option but to catch the bus.
Now if you find yourself in our sticky situation and have to make the trip to Thailand via bus, then know this one fact: There is no VIP (ie comfortable) bus. Don’t believe the lies! Every guest house and travel agent will show you pictures of beautiful big coaches with reclining seats and toilets and reassure you that it is
this exact vehicle you will be travelling on, but the truth is, the road is so bad that no operator in their right mind would let a nice bus on it as it wouldn’t stay nice for long.
As you travel through Asia you realise there are different levels of uncomfortability (is that even a word?) and we were definitely hanging off the bottom rung of the ladder. Now here we must interject with a strange fact of our travel time in South-East Asia. We are always the last to be picked
VIP Bus my arse!
The air-conditioning didn't work, the seats provided no support and no cushioning ... This made us feel like real backpackers! up for any bus journey. No matter what bus or country or time we choose, we are without fail the last 2 people on the bus, and last on the bus = most crappy seats on the bus. The seats that you look at when you get on a bus and say a silent prayer to whichever God you worship that you are not in those seats. Those are the seats that we get every time!
Anyway, the morning of our journey to Bangkok we got picked up by what our hotel receptionist assured us was the shuttle bus transferring us to our VIP bus. We weren’t too concerned, as it is common practice in Asia for various little minibuses to collect passengers from their guest house and drop them at the coach station. She wasn’t lying, she just omitted that the VIP bus was waiting for us on the Thai Border a 6-hour ride away on the non-existent roads.
Our backpacks were taken from us and slid down the aisles under the flip down seats. When we asked if we could put them somewhere else to give ourselves some legroom (it took a while to translate this
You call that a road?
This was actually a really smooth part of the road. Most of it there were potholes you could lose a scooter in. question to the driver) we were told that the seats were in fact broken and without our backpacks could not stay up. We were effectively sitting in the aisle on our own bags!
This journey definitely steals the number one spot for worst leg of travel in South-East Asia, and only 7 hours and 1 flat tyre later we were able to breathe a sigh of relief to be across the border and back on the sealed roads of Thailand.
Travel Tips
Q: Which should I get, a 1-day, 3-day or 6-day pass? A: It’s $20 for a 1-day pass, $40 for a 3-day, and $60 for a 6-day pass. We met so many people who told us to get a 3-day pass that we did just that, figuring that we’d probably want to take our time over 2 days, and then if we needed the third day that was okay. Because neither of us is really into history (and we didn’t use a guide or a guide book) we ended up moving pretty quickly through the temples, and in retrospect 1 day was definitely sufficient for us. We spent long enough at each temple to soak up
Not surprisingly...
we got a flat tyre. Which delayed us another hour. the atmosphere, climb up and down the main structures, and take lots of photos, but still found that we had time to pop back to our guesthouse for an hour before returning to the area for the sunset.
Q: Tips for hiring a tuk-tuk driver? A: If you are planning on just spending one day and you want to see as much as possible, agree beforehand which temples you want to cover in your circuit. Because we were pretty easygoing, our tuk-tuk driver just did a small circuit of the temples, hoping that we would book him the next day to do the “grand circuit”. In actual fact, we had enough time to cover both the small and the grand circuit in one day, but as we had agreed his suggested circuit at the time of booking we couldn’t get him to go further without him expecting more money. If you suspect that you will progress through the temples pretty quickly, it’s worth picking out a few extra temples on the grand circuit that you want included in your day rate.
Q: Are the more far flung temples worth visiting? A: We heard some good reports about Banteay
Srey but given that it was an extra $10 to get there driving 90 mins on a long, dusty and bumpy road (and 90 minutes back) we gave it a miss. On our second day we chose to visit the Roluos group. The nicest thing about them was that they were relatively tourist free, and at one point we were able to photograph a whole temple with not a person in sight. But there’s a reason people leave them off their itinerary … they’re just not as impressive as Angkor Wat, Bayon, and the main temples.
Q: What about the Balloon Ride looking over Angkor Wat? A: We’ve always wanted to go up in a Hot Air Balloon, so after reading good reports on the internet we decided to do the Balloon Ride. It was fun (Wow, we’re really high up here) and very impressive from an engineering point of view (it’s basically a massive Helium balloon connected to the ground by a giant winch which just lets you up and winds you back down) but the views weren’t spectacular. This was mainly due to the pollution and haze in the area. Given that Siem Reap isn’t a particularly
big city, we’re not sure why it was so hazy, bushfires maybe? Anyway, it’s not something that we’d tell everyone they “must do”. We’ll get a proper Hot Air Balloon ride one day!
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Liv
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Liv's Tips for Angkor Wat
Hi guys, I realise I'm into history a little more that you two, but I would have to disagree and say the 1 day pass isn't enough! The place is so huge, and 1 day wasn't enough to explore all the temples which are so fascinating with all the huge trees growing over them. I felt like Indiana Jones, and never tired of discovering overgrown statues, tombs etc! I got a 2 day pass, and could have had an extra day there...but that's just me! xx