The Angkor Wat Experience

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Sunnari was away in Battambang from Friday to Tuesday last week. Given that he is the only one who really speaks English, my continued presence over the weekend would have been somewhat pointless, so I was allowed four days off to go to Siem Riep.

Awesome.

Despite the fact that it is easier, cheaper and faster to get to Battambang via Phnom Penh, Sunnari insisted on accompanying me on the bus to Siem Riep. He is quite protective, possibly because he would be in trouble with head office if I were to become lost or broken.

I have been wanting to see Angkor Wat for four years, ever since I was travelling around Thailand and someone I met showed me beautiful photos on their camera. So I was pretty excited, but also concerned that the whole experience would become some kind of Machu Pichu like fiasco (for more details see here ).

Turns out, there was nothing to worry about. No queuing of any kind was necessary, and at no point did I feel compelled to punch any other tourists in the face. Of course it is low season here at the moment, but I think the critical factor was the huge, huge scale of the site made it easy to avoid crowds. I mean, there are several dozen major temples. Sure everyone wants to be at Angkor Wat for sunrise, but aside from that it only takes a tiny bit of initiative to escape the rush. Tour groups follow specific itineraries, and so long as you know what these are it is easy to just do the opposite. I bought a three day ticket, for 40 USD. My hostal lent bikes out to guests for free, so the first day I tried to tackle some of the closer temples by cycling. Hardly anyone does this and the guidebooks tell you it’s too far and too hot, but that is a lie. It’s a fantastic way to get around. Yes, I sweated an indecent amount and drank about 5 litres of water, but it was worth it. I followed hostal guy’s helpful sketch map alternative itinerary, which promised to dodge the tourists, and for the most part this worked perfectly. When I rocked up to Ta Prohm (where they filmed Tomb Raider) there were eleven tour busses parked outside, so I sat down, bought a drink and waited. After half an hour they all buggered off. Easy.

The cycling thing works fine, until it gets dark. At the end of the day, I went to watch the sun set from hilltop temple. By the time I’d climbed down again, it was very dark. Hostal owner assured me that the way back was well lit. Now, either this is a lie or I got lost (more likely), but the way I took most certainly was not well lit. Pretty soon I had no idea where I was. Given that there were no lights on my bike and the main temple complex is unbelievably huge, I gave up and had to suffer the indignity of shoving my bike in the back of a tuk-tuk and getting a lift home.

The next day I wanted to go to temples outside the main complex, about 30 or 40km away, so I hired a motorbike and a driver, who was so obnoxious I think I am going to write him his own special entry.

The first temple was Bantae Srei, carved out of pink sandstone, beautiful, tiny and perfectly formed. I was warned to get there before 8am. Sure enough, though there were only a couple of people around when I first arrived, at bang on 8 the swarms of Japanese tour groups descended as if from nowhere.

Next was Kbal Splen, which was good for a nice walk as much as anything. From the entrance you trek up a hill through the jungle to the see waterfall at the source of the river. Countless Lingas have been carved all the way along the riverbed, so that the water is blessed by flowing over them. Clever. Lingas are, of course, basically cocks. Sacred penises. So it is a river bed lovingly carved with thousands of nobs. This I had to see.

My last temple on the second day was Beng Mealea, perhaps my favourite. Few people make it here because it is an arse-punishing two hour journey outside of Siem Riep along some rough roads, but it is so worth it. The place is awesome, like a film set. I am surprised anywhere like it actually exists in the word. It’s huge, hopelessly overgrown with jungle and falling to bits. I don’t know why I prefer the crumbling wrecks to the places that have been lovingly restored. Maybe it appeals to my childish Indiana Jones fantasies. Because so much of it has been eaten up by vegetation or dynamited by looters, the only way to get around is to climb over, inside or around huge piles of collapsed rock and the rooms still standing. This is SO much fun.

After a while it started to rain heavily. At first this didn’t matter because the jungle canopy overhead was so dense, but when it got really torrential I had to run and hide in one of the long, dark, echoing galleries that still stands. When it stopped and I ventured out, steam was rising from the hot stone all around me, creating a thick mist that soaked me even though I’d avoided the rain. Very atmospheric.

The third day was a bit of a cock-up. Since the Angkor Wat temple itself is supposed to be the main attraction, I’d saved this till last. Obviously that was a mistake because it left no room for error. The classic image that springs to mind, the one I saw on my friend’s camera screen four years ago, is the sun rising behind the signature five towers, perfectly mirrored in the still waters of the surrounding lakes. Of course, I slept through my alarm. I didn’t wake up until 5am, by which point the sunrise ship had well and truly sailed. I was FURIOUS. I had wanted to see that sunrise and I had wanted that classic travel shot, to go with my Machu Pichu emerging from the mist and my Great Wall snaking across the hills. It was a gorgeous sunrise as well, or it looked that way from the road. By the time I reached the temple the colours were gone and the light was rubbish. Taking photos in Asia at this time of year is hard, and I don’t have the skills to shoot in this kind of intense light and make anything look good. I had mistakenly thought that the temples would make fantastic photographic subjects and I would come away with amazing shots, but that just hasn’t happened. Grey stone under intense light is hard to photograph. And I don’t know where people get these shots of monks clothed in bright orange conveniently strolling past to add much needed contrast. They must bring their own monks with them or something. I only saw one sodding monk, and he wasn’t particularly photogenic.

So, that sucked. But the overall Angkor Wat experience was amazing and in many ways better than I had expected. I spent the rest of the day looking around yet more temples, but I’m not going to write about that because I am aware that this is already very boring.

I am going to tell you about my trip back to Kampong Thom, because this at least offers people the opportunity to laugh at me. Kampong Thom is almost equidistant between Siem Riep and Phnom Penh on National Highway 6, one of the few decent roads in the country. When I say decent I mean that it is just wide enough for two lanes of traffic to pass and consists mostly of tarmac, though along the whole length work crews are constantly digging and filling in holes for no apparent reason. Unfortunately no barriers exist to prevent water buffalo and cattle wandering across from adjacent fields, but all in all it’s ok. So travel is relatively fast and easy, but you can’t get the bus to Kampong Thom, you have to get a ticket to Siem Riep or Phnom Penh then tell the driver to stop when you’re passing through the town. This is fine, unless you fall asleep. Guess what happened! After getting up at 4:15am every morning for three consecutive days, spending sunrise to sunset exploring the temples, I was a little tired. I dozed off. I woke up several hours later, filled with that special sense of impending doom. Finding another passenger that spoke English, I ascertained that we were about an hour outside of Phnom Penh. SHIT. The driver told me that if I wait at the side of the road, ‘maybe’ there will be a bus going back the other way. Given that it was raining torrentially and we were in the arse end of nowhere, I decided to cut my losses and stay on the bus another hour to Phnom Penh, where at least I could be assured of transport and accommodation.

It’s about six hours from Siem Riep to Phnom Penh, with Kampong Thom sitting roughly in the middle, so I’d gone a full three hours the wrong way, or 150km. This is a fairly major navigational cock-up by any standards. Naturally, I am filled with rage at my own ineptitude. I wondered how I was going to go about explaining to the TPO team that I’d accidentally gone to Phnom Penh. They have been reluctant to let me out alone, believing that if I am left to my own devices for a whole weekend I will surely perish. This goes some way towards proving them right.

My Cambodian simcard chose this moment to stop working, in a spectacular display of bad timing, so I plied a fellow passenger with 2000 riel to give me his phone to call Sunnari.

He asks where I am
I lie.

"There has been a problem with the bus, I’m still in Siem Riep… I’ll be back tomorrow"
"Ok no problem, I'm getting back tomorrow too, see you then…"

Well, that was easier than expected. Considering he insisted on accompanying me on the bus to Siem Riep and won't let me go down the street to use the internet without one of the guards in attendance, his reaction could have been a lot worse.

It was too late to get another bus back that day, so I returned to the hostal where I’d stayed just over a week ago. The staff remembered that I was supposed to be in Kampong Thom and were puzzled by my reappearance. I couldn’t be bothered to explain. I didn’t know whether Sunnari was getting back from the meeting in Battambang via Phnom Penh or Siem Riep, so was gripped with anxiety that I would somehow run into him and have to explain my presence. I deliberately bought my ticket from the bus company he told me was rubbish, in the hope of avoiding accidentally ending up on the same bus.

My not so elaborate deception worked well, and they still don’t know what happened.

I will NEVER tell them.

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Photos

Bantay Srei
Probably spelled wrong.

Apsaras
Heavenly beings whose divine purpose is to shag the king for all eternity.

Angor Wat
I didn't take many photos of the actual temple Angkor Wat, because I was sulking about missing sunrise.

Bantea Srei
Small but perfectly formed

Headless Buddha
Most of the Buddha statues were methodically decapitated either by Hindus, hundreds of years ago when the Kings insisted on changing the state religion every few years, or the Khmer Rouge.

Angkorr Wat
This would have been good had I got there about 20 minutes earlier.

The Aproach To Angkor Wat
Close, but not quite.

Headless Buddha
Most of the Buddha statues were methodically decapitated either by Hindus, hundreds of years ago when the Kings insisted on changing the state religion every few years, or the Khmer Rouge.

Me
This is literally the only photo of myself I have so far this trip.