Templed Out in Siem Reap

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Once we arrived in Siem Reap from our 7 hour boat trip in the sun, we jumped into a tuk tuk and headed into town, picking up some local chap along the way who then proceeded to pestered us all the way there, which was about 15 minutes, he firstly wanted us to stay at one of his guesthouses and secondly to use him when we go to Angkor Wat, well this pestering didn’t impress either of us so we jumped out at a guesthouse we picked out of the book and pretended to go in there, he wouldn’t leave until we took his number (we took it, knowing we wouldn’t call him back), once they left we headed round the corner and found a nice little place called Angkor Green Guesthouse, for $10 a night we had a big room and bathroom, plus aircon!!!! There’s no way they’ll find us now!!!

We spent the rest of the day pottering around Siem Reap, G was very happy because they had souvenir shops here, something Phnom Penh lacked. Siem Reap is a cool little town with plenty of nice bars and restaurants, we found one place called the Famous Angkor which had been recommended to us, so we ate there watching two westerners feed some local kids, there was one who had missed out and truly looked distraught about the whole situation, we personally would have come away feeling even more guilty because of the look on this little girls face!!!! The next day we saw the same boy being fed again, which made us feel sorry for all the other children who are not getting fed, he must have some knack in pestering westerners so much they just feed him to shut him up!!!

Anyway, we had a few beers that night before having a very early night in preparation for our extremely early start the next day to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat.

3:45am our alarms went off and we dragged ourselves out of bed and onto the road to wait for our tuk tuk. He arrived and off we sped into the darkness. We got to the ticket booths expecting massive queues but were greeted with no queues, we had our photos taken and scanned onto our tickets, we handed over $20 each and off we went. Our tuk tuk driver parked up and pointed us into the direction we were to head to watch the sunrise. Luckily Tony brought his torch because it was pitch black and there were no walls on the side of the bridge over the moat.

We walked along what seemed like ages before setting ourselves down by a pond infested with flies when our torches were on. We paid $1 each for a coffee and hot chocolate which entitled us to a chair each and we sat and waited for the sunrise. Much to our disappointment, the sunrise was rubbish, it just got light!!!!!

So instead of sitting there like a couple of lemons in the midst of a crowd of 1,000’s of lemons waiting for a glimpse of the sun, we packed up and went to look around the great Angkor Wat itself. It was pretty cool until it started to chuck it down, we spent a while in Angkor Wat waiting for the rain to go, which it didn’t so we made a dash for it back to our tuk tuk and headed to the next temple of the day Bayon.

Angkor is where the Cambodian “god-kings” of each strove to better their ancestors in size, scale and symmetry, ending in the world’s largest collection of religious buildings. Apparently the 100s of temples that are left today are a skeleton of what once existed. This city once boasted a population of one million in ancient Cambodia while London was just a mere 50,000. The Angkorian period spanned more than 600 years from AD802 to 1432.

Right history lesson over, we could sit here all day writing about all the history and the history of each Wat but we won’t, if you want to learn come along and see for yourself. In the mean time enjoy our pictures of us wondering around many temples. We think we saw close to 10 in 10 hours and that for us was enough, especially when after we left Bayon the sun came beating down on us and burnt us to a crisp. You’ll see there are a few photos at the end with Angkor Wat in shining glory under the sun, this is because we went back, not happy with our first lot of photos. Also our camera played up big time during the whole duration of our visit here so G isn’t very happy with what we got but Tony isn’t too keen on going back a third time just to get some good photos!!!!

All in all we had a great tine here and loved Siem Reap but us not being temple lovers saw enough in 1 day. For those who love temples, like our fellow Mongolian traveller, Ben, you can get a pass for one week for $60 and see as many as you like and as many times as you like ALL week!!!!

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