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Published: January 28th 2008
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Well I thought Angkor Wat/Thom needed there very own Blog…. If nothing else to get al the pics on… Or at least some of them as we took over 200 photos of Angkor Wat alone…. Not mentioning any of the other temples…
We arrived in Siem Reap and was met at the airport by who would become our trusty Tuk tuk driver for the next 5 days. Russ has already Blogged about our escapades on the quads so I wont repeat him… but it was lots of fun…. 😉
We arranged to go to go to Angkor Wat next morning as I was desperate to see it. However in the night I started to feel a tad poorly and spent the next 24 hours being very Ill…. Poor Russ lay and listened to me making friends with the toilet most the night and then got up and told Mr Sith our Tuk tuk man that we would have to do it the next day…..
Sooooo the next day feeling better we got up at 5.30 am to go and watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat… All the guide books and a lot of the other people we have asked said this
is the best time to go as it’s quite quiet…. Yeah quite quiet except for the coaches of Japanese tourists and every other bugger that has read the same books….
It was amazing though. It was still dark when we got there so you couldn’t make out the buildings. You go through the west gate which is like a fortress and then walk round onto the main walkway. On Midsummer the sun Rises directly behind the main tower of Angkor but when we were there it was more southerly… you can see form our pics the sky changes colour almost as much as my hair, all in the space of half an hour. As the sun comes up it is almost like Angkor grows out of the ground, and then gets bigger and bigger the higher the sun goes. Due to the amount of people I thought we should go into the main building before the sun was fully up, to try and miss the crowds. Which was a damn fine idea as we almost had it to ourselves….
It is a beautiful place the carvings are amazing and it has been looked after reasonably well (apart from the extreme
Angkor Wat
Angkor in the morning light looting), There is a lot of restoration work going on in the main building which I can imagine is an ongoing project on a place of that age…. I can only imagine how spectacular it must have looked 800 years ago painted gold glimmering in the sun light…. We wondered round and lit a few incense sticks… the girls found a tiny kitten under a Buddha and played with him while we took pics. ….And then all the tours started filtering in…. so we left… I know I am no better than all the other tourists but it is still a place of worship and there seems to be little respect for that… many of them are loud rude and badly dressed, one woman (I think) comes to mind, she/he (?) was arriving as we left… she was wearing the smallest hot pants you have ever seen and a see through bra top, she looked more like a porn star and was tottering round in stilettos… why they let her in I don’t know as there are signs asking for appropriate attire….
We then went of to Angkor Thom which was just as amazing. The Bayon is a temple made
of towers with faces on. It is not as well preserved as Angkor Wat, but equally as impressive. We climbed up the top of the temple which we couldn’t do at Angkor Wat due to restoration work. My god the steps are steep. They are knee high and only 6” deep so it’s like climbing a mountain…. Which is what they represent, so that’s OK…. Or it is till you have to get down again…..
We then went round the rest of Angkor Thom, The Elephant Terrace and The Terrace of the Leper king Which are all part of the Angkor Thom complex/City.
Both Temples are amazing and I would happily have gone round them for hours (cos I’m a boring sad case) but the kids were shattered by this time so we headed back to the Guesthouse for food and a rest……
In the Evening we went back up to the Temples to Phnom Bakheng which is a Temple Mountain on a manmade hill between Angkor Wat and Thom. This is apparently the place to go at sunset. You can see all the way round on top of the Temple and if you have the money you can get
an Elephant up to the top of the hill, Which I cant imagine is much fun for the elephants. Who have been trekking round the temples all day. Again it was heaving. We did climb to the top of the temple and look out but it was to busy so I took Aisha down and waited for Russ and Ellie to do there thing. We used the steps as the whole Temple is crumbling and there are warning signs up about going on the terraces. No one pays any attention to them though, which is very sad as this is the oldest Temple at the site. If that many people climb it every day in 10 years it will be a pile of rubble. It was entertaining watching the idiots trying to climb it in their stilettos and mini skirts though…. We left before the sunset as we didn’t want to have to fight our way down the hill with everyone else as it is very steep and the path is very uneven.
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edgesoftheworld
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Wow
Bali looked great. We are hardly travelling anywhere in SE Asia before we return - from your blogs we should plan another trip! Wish us luck with the malaria tabs - we start next week!