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Published: August 11th 2009
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Blog 14 - Siem Reap and Angkor Wat
After a few days on Koh Chang and our visa running out fast we headed for the Thailand/Cambodia border at Poipet from where we had arranged to take a bus up to Siem Reap in North West Cambodia, home to the magnificent Angkorian Temples of Angkor Wat.
Poipet is very uneasy on the eyes, ears and nose, a dirty festering border town full of casinos and cheap hotels for those unfortunate enough to be stuck there after the border crossing has closed for the day. Luckily for us we arrived around midday and no intention of staying here for the night, so after about an hour of queuing in extreme heat and dust with our bags on our backs we finally made it over the border and into Cambodia where we caught a 5 hour bus to Siem Reap.
Arriving in Siem Reap around 6pm our first impressions were of a small town, half finished with development and the other half left as dirt track roads and road side shacks. After finding a cheap hotel for the night we headed out for some dinner and to try and catch some
of the 3rd Ashes test against Australia. To our pleasant surprise there was a wide range of restaurants and bars to chose from especially on the aptly named - Pub street, which funnily enough is named for its multitude of bars and restaurants, all of which were offering cheap food and drink prices and every type of cuisine you can think of from Mexican to BBQ crocodile (very tasty indeed!).
After a day to settle in and find our way around Siem Reap we booked our day trip to the temples of Angkor Wat.
After getting up early and having breakfast we jumped into our Tuk Tuk for the day and sped off through the dusty streets towards the Angkor Wat complex. After paying our $20 for entrance and having our photo taken for the pass we headed straight for the most famous of the temples - Angkor Wat itself!
Our first impression when arriving at the bridge that crosses the moat was one of pure awe and appreciation for the feat it must have been to construct such an intricately designed and awe inspiring structure. As you walk towards the main part of the temple you
Found one at last!!
Lucy in a papasan chair! are greeted by the stupa’s of the temple itself which reveal the silhouette in the sky which is immortalised on every postcard and picture of Angkor Wat that is available around Siem Reap. It truly was an impressive sight. Everybody around is armed with their cameras and snapping away as if it was going to be the last photo they ever take. When you get over the initial feeling of being awestruck and start to explore the inside of the temple you are greeted by troops of monkeys looking for food and that are more than happy to pose for photo’s as long as there is a treat for them as part of the bargain. As you begin to explore deeper into the temple it is easy to see and understand why there are so many professional photographers that come here to add to their portfolio’s, every angle you can look at provides a picture that inspires the imagination to how the temples must have looked when they were first rediscovered by explorers. After spending about an hour and a half wandering around the temple and snapping away with our cameras until they were too hot from over use, we
headed back to our trusty tuk tuk driver, only after being bombarded by hordes of small children asking you to buy water, postcards, bracelets and books and managing to fend them off long enough to jump into our tuk tuk and tell the driver to go did we move onto the next temple, the equally impressive Bayon temple which lies within the Angkor Thom city complex.
As we drove upto the East gate of the Angkor thom city complex we were greeted by two rows of statues, one either side of the bridge, many of which have had their heads removed, which we soon found out from our tuk tuk driver happened when the Khymer Rouge were in power. Many of the heads were cut off and sold on to other countries as priceless artefacts to help fund the Regime. As you drive through the gate you come out on a driveway that heads straight to Bayon, which originally housed a vast library of the temples and teachings. The entire structure is covered with intricately carved inscriptions and large heads. We hopped off our tuk tuk and again wading through the crowds of hawkers and small children toward the
building for a more in depth exploration of the temple and the rest of the city complex. After we had had our fill of exploring the city complex we were whisked off to two more temples, the first of which was called Takeo, which is an unfinished temple as the carvings and inscriptions were never started, at Takeo we climbed to the very top of the temple up some incredibly steep steps, needles to say as neither of us particularly enjoy heights we only stayed up there long enough to take some photo’s of the spectacular views over the rainforest canopy and surrounding temples and then swiftly (and extremely carefully) we headed down and onto what we thought was going to be our last temple of the day - Ta Prohm, more famously known as the temple in which part of the Tomb raider movie was shot!
So there we were traipsing through light jungle in the footsteps of a film crew and the adventurous Lara Croft herself (Sorry I mean Angelina jolie!) when we came to a clearing and a huge crumbled stone structure which was locked in an eternal struggle not to be reclaimed by the deep
and mysterious forest which once solely ruled this land. As we wandered through the dark corridors of the temple and out into an open courtyard area we were greeted by numerous tree roots that had simply become part of the temple as they had overgrown the beautifully carved stone structures and pushed their way through foundations in order to stretch out further in search of water and nutrients. We spent around and hour and a half making our way from section to section of the temple with each section being unique from the last and within each section nature was slowly starting to claw it’s way back against the manmade structures and retake control.
After leaving Ta Prohm feeling slightly spooked as the surrounding jungle gives the temple a quite eerie green glow and feeling about it, we were both exhausted and hopped on our tuk tuk for the last time and headed for the hotel!
The rest of our time in Siem Reap was spent relaxing and doing a Khymer cooking course which was really interesting. We cooked 3 courses each including the dubiously named “Green Bean dessert” which needless to say wasn’t that appetising!! We would
both recommend Siem Reap to anyone as there is a very good atmosphere around the area, you still get every person in sight trying to get you to hire their tuk tuk for a day but usually a polite no thank you is enough to get them to leave you alone. It is a strange place though as it has so many western developments yet half the rounds are still just potholed dirt tracks and poverty is everywhere you look.
So after almost a week in Siem Reap we are heading off to Phnom Penh to try and sort out a 60 day Thai visa before we head down to the seaside town of Shianoukville.
Hope all is well in blighty.
Take care
Andrew and Lucy
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