Siem Reap - Land of a Thousand Tuk Tuk's

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It's rainy season in Cambodia, not so's you'd notice. As we approached Siem Reap for landing it was difficult to make out any dry land at all. I think I said "My God, it's just one big lake". Our airport transfer confirmed most of the town was under water along with a fair few temples but it's ok, the hotel is above the water. Good thing too as there were plenty of hotels along the way that had issues with flooding.

The first day we went out on the small temple circuit and decided we probably needed a guide to get the most out of our trip. In reality, whilst he was a lovely chap, the information became incredibly samey, along the lines of, here we have a depiction of the Churning of the Milk in which such and such was created, here's a bas relief of everyday life, here's a so and so created in the Churning of the Milk, here's a bas relief of everday life, see the fish and the pigs, etc. Some of the temples may indeed have been flooded but in the end we had to put him off taking us to some.

However, he did insist that we go to see Ta Prohm, the temple featured in the Tomb Raider film. It was said that it was flooded but we took a back way in fully expecting to have to wade through but it turned out to be fine. I'm so glad we did. In my opinion this was the "must see" temple, both for the jungle atmosphere and the amazing trees that have grown into the structures. If I hadn't seen a single other temple I'd have been happy.

We took the next day off and typically it was lovely and sunny so we spent it by the pool. A nice way to spend a day but in hindsight it might have been better to have carried on with temples on the large circuit. On the other hand, there's only so many temples I can trudge around before I'm all templed out. Still, we did venture out to the museum, which is incredibly interesting if you have a strange fetish for statues of buddha and Vishnu. Yup, they had a thousand statues and then some more statues and then a statue or two and then a few more in between which there were statues. They didn't have anything else at all, unless you count the most coffee like cup of coffee we had in the whole of Cambodia. We did inquire about cake but they just had a biscuit, just the one biscuit all by itself in the display cabinet. Oh well....

The following day we had a tuk tuk booked to take us around but no guide. We managed two temples in the HAMMERING rain before calling a halt for drinks and a dry off. From where we were sitting we could see a temple we hadn't yet looked at but the rain kept coming. In the end an executive decision was made to call a halt to the day. Upon explaining to our driver he looked mystified and said "You don't want to go over there?", indicating the in view temple.

I did enjoy seeing Angkor Wat etc, don't get me wrong about that, but in the end I came away feeing a bit sad. The Cambodians have an asset that brings in more and more tourists every year but it's all in a terrible state and they let everyone climb all over anything they please. At one point we raised this with our guide and an Australian(?) lady joined in stating how disgusted she was with the way the monuments were being treated, every now and then turning around to take another picture of her daughter who had climbed into a window type opening , lying in it posing. It was funny but sad too. That's without the fact that all of the temples are falling down and the Cambodian way of dealing with it is to throw things back up, maybe not in the place they came from, but kinda somewhere near.

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