The Temples of Angkor

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August 3rd 2008

Published: August 19th 2008

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Steve and Laura

Monk Playing

By Angkor Wat

Well, what can I say?
Everybody should visit Angkor!
This place is simply breathtaking, even better than the very high expectations that we had for it.
We spent 5 nights in Siem Reap which gave us enough time to explore the temples for 3 full days, and they were 3 of the best days of our trip so far.

First of all Siem Reap is a surprisingly pleasant town to wander around, with some impressive french architecture and lovely cafes and restaurants to refuel at after a hard day of temple spotting!!

Our first day in Siem Reap we spent in the town visiting a few museums including a miniture replica of Angkor Wat built by a local man, perfect for those "the world has been taken over by gigantic lizards" photos!! (of which i have a few)
In the evening we travelled up to The Angkor Temple complx to by our 3 day passes and as we arrived after 4 pm we got into the park that evening for free as well. We got our first glimpse of Angor Wat but the weather was dreadful and the light was fading so we decided to save it for the

Ban Melea

morning

We arose the next day at some ridiculous hour (4:30 am i think) and set off on our bicycles to the Angkor complex.
We saw our first sunrise on the hill temple of Phnom Bakhong with a few down over Angkor Wat, It was lovely as there were only around 3 or 4 other pepole up there with us.
Cycling around the complex is without doubt the best way to see the complex if you don't mind a bit of physical exertion, you can travel off to wherever you want in the complex at your own speed and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
Over the 2 days we spent cycling we clocked up 75km, which we thought was pretty good, but because the temples are never more than a few km apart you never feel particularly tired (or maybe i'm just a kind of superman, i'll let you decide on that!!)
On the first day we saw the huge ancient city of Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm, The temple featured in The Tomb Raider film with the large tree growing through the middle of it and many other beautiful temples one of which we cycled throgh the jungle for half

Bayon

More Faces

an hour and had the whole telpme completely to ourselves, it was fantastic!

Our second day we hired a TukTuk to take us further afield to the temples of Bang Melea and Banteay Srei and the amazing, carved riverbed at Kbal Spean.
All of these sights were brilliant, Bang Melea was possibly our favourite temple as it ws completely covered in dense jungle and was really exciting to explore. Banteay Srei was the most beautifully carved of all of the temples we visited and the carved riverbed was amazing, with thousands of linga carved into the riverbed as well as images carved into the rockfaces on the riverbanks.

Our final day in Angkor we were back on the bikes and we visited more of the temples in the main park area as well as re-visiting some of our favourites.
Being in front of Angkor Wat at dawn was a great experience and we spent many hours looking at the amazingly carved walls of the huge temple.
We finished our days in Angkor by revisiting one of our favourite temples, Bayon, for sunset.
We watched the sunset reflect off the numerous enigmatic faces surrounding us as our time at

Dead Fish Restaurant

On my mum's recommendation!! The diagonal shoots are for carrying drinks up & down on a pulley!

Angkor came to an end in a fittingly beautiful way.

What a fantastic place this is, although there are many tourists about, if you are willing to go off the main tourist routes and itineraries a bit it is easy to find your very own corner of Angkor and imagine what it must have been like for the peple that rediscovered these great monuments.
Everyone should experience Angkor at some point If you can make it there you won't be disappointed.
Off to Malaysia next and the cosmopolitan, modern city of KL so probably a bit of a gear change from slumbering, laidback indo-china but it should be fun.

Hope you are all well, keep us up to date with any news.

Steve and Laura. xxx

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