Temples, Temples and more Temples (plus the occasional lady boy)

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As promised, this blog will mainly be about temples...

After a great first night's sleep in Siem Reap our savior tuk-tuk driver from the previous night offered to be our temple driver for the next few days and we readily accepted. We wanted to see the temples at different times of day, so decided that it would be good to go at sunset for our first glimpse of Angkor Wat! The done thing in the evening is to climb Phnom Bakheng, from the top of which you can get spectacular panoramic views of the surrounding temples and jungle as well as watch the sunset. The site is absolutely huge, and we were thankful we had decided on renting a tuk tuk driver rather than cycling around! We didn't see that much of a sunset, but there was a rather impressive thunderstorm and, of course, the view.

The following morning we had our first early start, setting off at 5am for Banteay Srei (the 'City of Women'😉 which is one of the further temples and also, in our opinion, the prettiest, with its pink-tinged sandstone. As we arrived at the temple so early we had the grounds to ourselves, and walked around admiring the detailed carvings, which are the best preserved of all the temples. A nicely corrupt guard (standard in Cambodia) let us pay an extra dollar to go behind the barriers and get super up close with the carvings and stone monkey guards! Woo!

Next stop was Banteay Kdei, which was huge and pretty impressive, with a procession of doorways right through the middle. After that was the 'Tomb Raider Temple', made famous by Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, and also known as Ta Prohm. Here lots of trees are consuming the temple walls, which makes it very beautiful! Suzanne and Hannah pretended to be Lara Croft for a while, as they had french plaits (mainly to stop sweatyness, but also for this purpose...). Unfortunately, because the temple has become so famous, it was rammed with tourists. The plus side of this was that we could have a good laugh at their awkward posing and photo shoot sessions.

Our tuk-tuk driver suggested that we go to Banteay Samre, and it turned out that this was a great suggestion. The temple had very few tourists, and was beautiful in a different way to the previous ones we had seem. At its center we found an old monk, who lived there with his cats and proceeded to pray with us, give us bracelets and tell our fortunes. Hannah's were not so good, but luckily you get 3 tries and it was a case of 3rd time lucky! Taz and Suzanne lucked-out first time (apparently Taz is going to marry a king/ prince and Suzanne is going to have a chat with Vishnu).

After 7 temples and 8 hours in scorching sun we returned to Siem Reap and were very grateful for the swimming pool at the hotel! We spent the afternoon wallowing and lounging, before going to a rather bizarre market in the evening... The stalls, area and produce were up-market and nice, but at the center on a stage that we expected to be for traditional music and dance there were a series of awful and garish drag acts, that we didn't really understand the appeal of, but that the locals loved!

The next morning we got up even earlier (at 4.10am, not fun) to see the daddy of all temples, Angkor Wat itself, at sunrise. We were among the first to get there but it quickly got very crowded and by the time the sun actually rose there were around 500 of us watching... Despite this, it was still very beautiful and well worth the early wake up! However, we felt that the interior of the temple was a little disappointing, particularly in comparison to some of the smaller, more intimate temples we had visited the day before. There were some monkeys though.

Angkor Thom, the largest complex of temples (about 1.2 x 1.6km), was the next port-of-call. The Bayon is the main temple and sits at the centre. We really liked this temple, with its many stone faces and quirky layout. The lower levels were crypt-like and deserted, but as soon as you went up one of the horribly steep stone staircases (a feature of all temples it would appear) there were hoards of tourists. We walked around the rest of the complex (well, some of it), which included the Terrace of Elephants and the pretty Royal Palace area, which has been reclaimed by the jungle.

The final three temples we went to were Preah Khan, Neak Poan and Ta Som, which are built at either end and in the centre of a large lake and are all very beautiful, with good engravings, nice trees and not too many tourists. By this point we were horrendously sweaty, and very much looking forward to wallowing in the pool again.

Day 4 of temples was the final day, and we got up a little later and spent a couple of hours exploring the Roluos Group. These temples are in a different area and are among the oldest of all temples in Cambodia. They were very different to all that we had seen before, and our favourite was Bakong which was surrounded by a pretty lilypad-filled lake.

We really enjoyed our time in Siem Reap, as well as the obvious temple-related attractions it has many nice markets and restaurants, as well as a great atmosphere. We think we did the temples justice, and are quite happy not seeing any more for a while yet. It is probably good that our next stop is Sihanoukville, where we plan to spend our days lounging on a beach, drinking cocktails and hopefully not lobstering (although this is probably inevitable for some of us...)

Goodbye and lots of temple-love xxxxx

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