The national pride of Cambodia

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Following a 6 hour bus ride we finally reached Siem Reap. The once small town is booming as masses of tourists are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year while visiting the largest religious monument in the world - the temples of Angkor. In Siem Reap new hotels are being opened almost every day. Along with them are all the typical services that cater for the visitors, massage parlours, cyber caffes, restaurants and such. Everything is overpriced for Cambodian standards. Since I mentioned restaurants, I might as well tell you about an odd thing we noticed about Khmers (Cambodian people). 90 % of them eat Western food when they visit restaurants. Hamburgers are the most popular, but theyre closely followed by hot dogs and pizzas. That is kinda hard to understand, especially considering the fact that Western food is twice as expensive as Khmer and that the average pay of an employed local is between $50-100 per month.
The closest temples of Angkor are about 7 kilometres out of Siem Reap. Theres over 20 temples alltogether and since theyre usually a few kilometres apart, it made sense to rent bycycles. $5 for three days, not too bad. Unfortunately the bikes werent mountain bikes but old plain ones that made cycling 20-30 kilometres a day on 30 degrees celsius all the more difficult. But hey, we needed some exercise anyway.
Photos cannot explain the magnificient beauty of the temples, let alone words. I still hope these few pics will show you a few reasons that make Angkor one of the wonders of the world. Just so you know (youll forget soon anyway 😊), most of the temples were built between 9th and 13th century. The emperor who built most of them was Jayavarman VII, whose empire span over a large part of Indochina. Three days were enough to see most of the temples, except the more remote ones, hidden tens of kilometres in the jungle. Cambodias national pride and a place of pilgrimage for lots of Khmers was the last place where we stopped for more days. What follows is a 3-day trip to the northeastern part of the country to the border town of Stung Treng that will be our launching pad for the next destination - Laos.

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