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The bus journey the second day was pretty uneventful and after a quick toilet/water/banana break we were in Siem Reap bus station within about 7 hours. Now the real hard work started; finding somewhere to stay. We have started to notice over the last 4-6 weeks that the numbers of our fellow travellers has decreased somewhat, we aren't sure whether it's because of 'the global economic recession' or because it is now rainy season but we thought that this might bode well in our search for a hotel. On arrival at the bus station we were greeted by a slightly over zealous Cambodian guy called 'Mr Lucky' who made it his personal mission to help us to find a hotel (He gets a cut of the money so naturally he was very willing to help!). After three mediocre places we pulled up at a newly refurbished place called the Central Angkor boutique hotel and managed to get the price down to a very reasonable $25 per night - result!!!! We spent our first afternoon relaxing by the pool until the obligatory rainy season storm started at about 4.30. Mr Lucky came back to see us in the afternoon and he talked
us into letting him be our guide for three days around the temples; if we wanted an English speaking full on guide it would cost us but Mr Lucky volunteered his services and his tuk tuk for the bargain price of $55!!! Walking around Siem Reap later on we were both very surprised by the standard of accommodation and bars and restaurants, there are some amazing places to stay, I never realised how many 5 star hotels there are in Cambodia, (Mum, I think you and Peter would love it here, it should be on your next itinerary I reckon!). We ended up eating in an amazing new bar called Nest which was stunning and the food was awesome! We decided to have an early night in preparation for our early start but I ended up watching dreadful films on star movies until stupid o clock in the morning; some thing’s never change!!! We were up at four and waited for the arrival of our guide; turns out Mr Lucky isn’t quite so lucky, he dropped his phone down the loo and couldn’t take us the first day because of his stomach problems which he described in full detail (joy!)
so, his brother Long Seng was our guide for day one! We paid our $40 each for a three day pass and made our way over to Angkor Wat. We got our first taste of the Cambodian hard sell (More of which later) when we bought two small bottles of water and a can of coke for $5 - steep!! On first sight it was an incredible place and we made our way along the causeway across the enormous 200m wide moat and through onto the terrace to see the sun come up over the towers. We weren’t the only people up for the event but unfortunately there was no sunrise to speak of, it was still a pretty awesome sight though and well worth the early start. We spent the next 3 very hot and sweaty hours wandering around Angkor Wat marvelling at the hundreds of Apsara’s (celestial nymphs) and the incredible carvings all over the walls;- the most amazing of which is the Churning of the Sea Milk in the east gallery. The story behind the carving is that the gods and the demons spent 1000 years in a kind of tug of war churning the cosmic sea
to produce the elixir of immortality. FYI - It was this that created the Apsara’s and Angkor Wat has almost 2000 over it’s walls.
When we walked out of Angkor the circus of cafes and souvenir stalls and kids selling postcards had well and truly begun. There are hundreds of very sweet ,very clever kids all over the temples selling either postcards or bracelets or flutes or posing for photo’s and they all know the capital city of every country and the population and the prime minister etc and if they tell you all this they then expect you to buy stuff! At first it’s not too bad but after a while it became pretty hard work, as you approached each temple up to 15 kids would be on you straight away all saying buy one more mr, buy one more! As we are both such a soft touch we ended up with a whole lot of postcards and general crap after the first day and spent an absolute fortune but after a few hours it got very repetitive and as the day wore on and the amount of tourists got less they really started the hard sell and it
became pretty hard going saying no sorry all the time. Moaning over now sorry!
From Angkor Wat we went straight to Angkor Thom; I hadn’t really read much about the temples before we arrived and until I had starting reading the guide book to decide which temples we wanted to see I didn’t really have a clue about any of them but, as soon as I started reading I was pretty excited about seeing Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm of Tomb Raider fame. As you all know I’m not the artiest of people and religion isn’t exactly one of my hobbies either, however, Bayon at Angkor Thom, was the most incredible thing I have ever seen. It is a temple that was built by King Jayavarman 7th in the late 12th century. The Khmers believe King Jayavarman 7th to be the ultimate of their kings as he built many hospitals during his reign and also created Bayon to honour both Hindu and Buddhist Gods unlike many of the other temples. Bayon has over 200 faces in it’s towers and gates and they are just mesmerising. It suddenly dawned on us when we arrived that the two Buddha images we had
in our old living room are from here, no wonder I like this place! We spent about two hours just wandering around looking at all the different faces and taking way too many photos, I was absolutely stunned by it’s beauty, that king was a very smart man! Eventually Tel managed to prise me away and we went and explored the Elephant Terrace and the Terrace of the Leper King both of which are incredible, the intricacy of the carvings are amazing. We were very glad that we half inched a brilliant guide book from our hotel reception and were able to find the hidden walls within both terraces. We stopped off for a quick coconut before heading on to Ta Prohm. We were greeted by another remarkable face tower and lots of annoying kids and then wandered down a shady track to the awesome jungle temple. It was discovered in 1911 along with the rest of Angkor and the inspired decision was made to maintain it in it’s natural state as it was when it was discovered. This is the temple that Tomb Raider was filmed at and it is as impressive in real life as it was on
TV. The temple has literally been ingested by the enormous silk and fig tree’s and it was a very cool place to wander through for a few hours and we were very lucky there was hardly anyone else about. It had been a pretty long and very hot day and we decided to finish our first day with a visit to a few of the smaller temples and then back to the hotel for a much needed swim. Everyone says that Angkor Wat and it’s temples are the eighth wonder of the world and I must say I was somewhat sceptical, but, it was one of the best days we have had since we have been away and I would recommend it to anyone:- They are incredible!!!
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Claude
non-member comment
Your capacity for remembering facts would put magnus magnusson to shame my dear!