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Published: January 22nd 2013
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I think we spent the entirety of our time in Siem Reap tired in someway. Constant travelling does catch up with you, and sometimes you just need to do nothing. But Siem Reap is not such a place. It's the sort of place that prescribes being in a certain place for a certain time in order to catch a certain light.
It began with an 4.30 alarm in Phnom Penh, having arrived back from Koh Rong via Sihanoukville the night before. While there can be no complaints about the speed in which we were ushered onto our minivan to Siem Reap, complaints abound about the manner of the ride there. I found out that it is possible to be red with rage at the same time as being pale with fear. Sitting in the middle of the back row, I had the perfect view of our inevitable death as we traversed the 200ish kilometres on the opposite side of the road, constantly in the face of approaching HGV's. As I spluttered consistently for much of the four hour journey: 'if anyone drove like this at home, they'd be imprisoned'. In a result as unlikely, and surely using up any
Room View
Pretty fancy for less than $10. hope of winning the lottery in the future, we somehow arrived in Siem Reap alive.
For once our free pick up from the bus station was late, but just as I was borrowing a phone to ring the guesthouse, a timid tuk tuk driver knowing my name arrived. He was to become our chauffeur over the next two days.
First he took us to the guesthouse, a fine standalone house in the midst of Siem Reap - a town like Aguas Calientes below Maachu Picchu, that seems to exist to serve the ancient wonder on its doorstep. After having to busy ourselves with some local lunch while we waited for it to become available, our room, complete with towels folded as swans, did much to dispel the image of basic Cambodian accommodation we had formed up to that point.
The amiable Australian owner of the guesthouse suggested there was no point flogging ourselves around various temples that afternoon, and that we should just head into Angkor for sunset. I somewhat disagreed having read various guides saying a single day in the Angkor Archaeological park was not enough. Why should we waste this extra afternoon?
My View
This blog was polished off many weeks ago on a dusty bus ride from Negombo to Kandy in Sri Lanka. In hindsight though, the Australian was correct. We left Siem Reap 36 hours later feeling we had seen plenty of Angkor (all templed-out!).
So for a couple of hours that initial afternoon, we had a well earned rest in the extremely comfortable hotel room. Then, we re-joined our tuk tuk driver (somewhat apologetically having left him waiting all afternoon), and headed to the park for sunset.
A further benefit of entering the park after 4pm is that any tickets purchased after that time are considered tickets for the next day, but still allow entrance there and then. Thus you get a bonus few hours that evening. As it happens, I'm glad we didn't have to pay to enter the park for sunset, as it was something of an anti-climax.
Angkor Wat itself, the picture postcard - does not feature in a sunset itself, it's predominantly a sunrise location. So while we caught our first fleeting glimpses of the temple upon entering the park, we quickly whizzed by in the tuk tuk, heading to a different temple on a hill - from which the sun can be seen setting across the other side of the park. Unfortunately, to say that we weren't the only people with the same idea would be the understatement of the trip. The hill temple was so crowded that staff had set up a nightclub style 'one-in-one-out' system at the peak, restricting entrance to the best views at the top. With the queue massive, and hordes more breathless tourists ascending by the second, Sophie and I had a quick mooch around, took a few outstretched sunset photos from obscure angles behind trees, and then prematurely descended back to the tuk tuk waiting at the bottom.
Although the sunset had been a slight disappointment, such disappointment was quickly tempered by Siem Reap's aptly named 'Pub Street'. Its brightly lit bars and restaurants did much to vie for our attention, as did the nearby night market. We weren't too late to bed though, as it would be our second consecutive 4.30am start the next morning.
I tend to find sunrises a bit of a let down. They seem perennially plagued by mist, and that's not to mention the disgustingly early mornings needed to catch them. Sunsets on the other hand tend to be both convenient and much more reliable. So, with Angkor having failed to deliver a particularly good sunset (actually, it was perfectly good, we just couldn't see much of it), I wasn't holding my breath about the sunrise that morning. With grit in our eyes - from both the early morning and kicked up off the road by the windswept tuk tuk - we arrived at Angkor Wat in the dark, but just in time.
Not for the sunrise, which was still a quarter hour away, but just in time to bag one of the final decent viewing spots by the left-hand reflecting pool. Within minutes the crowds were three deep behind us. To our left and right, cameras and tripods were set up in huge numbers, like the press-pack at some sort of world changing press conference. Not to be outdone, I squelched around on all-fours in the wet grass trying to set up my more conservatively sized tripod in the dark. Sophie meanwhile feistily took on the challenge of sharp elbowed Chinese.
For once though, the sunrise was anything but a let down. It came swiftly and spectacularly, illuminating one of the world's great ancient symbols in purples and oranges. By the time I'd snapped 50ish lopsided photos from prone in the grass, and Sophie had seen off the Chinese challenge, the sun was up and it was time to explore Angkor.
We saw all of the important stuff, and plenty of lesser stuff too. Particular highlights were the many faces of the Bayon temple, and especially Ta Prohm - consumed by the jungle to the point that stone and rock have become impossible intertwined. By lunchtime, when we were returning to Angkor Wat to actually explore the temple by its best afternoon light, Sophie and I were exhausted. The still impressive Angkor Wat did much to postpone our exhaustion a little longer, as did chatting to some Monks inside (yes they do get hot in their robes - I asked). But upon finally leaving the park, it was back to bed for a blissful nap until another fun evening on Pub Street (and a $1 fish massage obviously).
As I've said to all who have asked me since we left Angkor (and plenty who haven't): with a bit of context, it truly is a hugely impressive site. The ancient Khmer were one of the most advanced civilisations on earth when much of Angkor was built, and the site housed the biggest city in the world (1 million+ occupants) in its day. It is definitely possible to get 'templed-out', but reading up on the significance of what can be seen at Angkor can help delay such a feeling. Sophie and I could certainly have read more. For example, with a bit of retrospective research, I can now see how vast swathes of architectural flourishes that were were developed at Angkor were copied by, and feature prominently in neighbouring states - particularly Thailand.
I'd say Machu Pichu probably out 'wows' Angkor by a nose, for its setting, and for its mystique. But, if you want a sunrise to set your watch by - head to Cambodia.
Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor were the final leg of our relatively brief week in Cambodia. But even in that short time, it's a country that had a big impact on me. It's a place in which clearly, the atrocities of the last generation are still taking their toll. This is clear from both its state of development - which is way behind its neighbours; and most clearly, its people. It's cliche, but there really is a look behind the eyes of the average Cambodian that seems to reveal the suffering that took place, even if it were before their time. Laos is similarly undeveloped, but go there and you see an unmistakable twinkle in the peoples' eyes. In Cambodia, you unmistakably don't.
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