Advertisement
Published: April 1st 2013
Edit Blog Post
I have a list of places I would like to visit before I grow old. One of the place listed in it was Siem Reap, Cambodia, I wanted to see the famous Angkor Wat. So as early as January I have been bugging my friend to visit this place. I told her March is the best time to visit since it's summer.
So as early as January we're able to booked for our air ticket followed by our accommodation. Which, on the side note I would highly recommend it's Bou Savy Guesthouse. Going back to our trip, as time approaches we get more excited followed by all those research (thank you google!) about Siem Reap and of course our preparation like whose bringing this and that.
Okay and so there we are in Siem Reap, since we arrived around 3pm our tuk tuk driver cum travel agent ask us if we wanted to visit this place called Tonle Sap Lake. What? Yeah! We failed to research about that place. Anyway, of course we agree to visit the said lake. It was about 30-45 minutes tuk tuk ride from Siem Reap Town, since he mentioned it's a lake we were
expecting of course, lake! but then it seems that the water is very shallow and muddy. I told myself hmmm! this doesn't look good, since it's summer the lake is dry. So anyway we take the boat ride and it was really hard to pass the lake since the water is really shallow. So it took us around 20-30 minutes before we reached the big stretch of the lake. There you'll see a community "a floating community" they have school, stores and they even have fish and crocodile farm. A real good deal to see apart from the temples.
We started our second day with our much awaited temple visits. In Siem Reap you will need to pay for park admission. But you will only pay to only one place at the Angkor Archeological Park office. The passes are sold in one-day, three-day and seven-day. Since our plan is to visit all temples in 3 days we paid for the three-day pass which is about USD40.00 which is by the way personalized, your picture is printed in the pass. So it's not transferable unfortunately.
We begin our itinerary in the South Gate of Angkor Thom which is often
the first stop of any tour in Siem Reap. The entrance is best described with it's incredible manlike face statues. The entrance itself has four huge image of man's face facing four sides, I guess it represents east, west, north and south. From the entrance our friendly tuk tuk driver brought us to Bayon Temple, then from there we walked to Baphuon, Phimeanakas, Sras Srei and Terrace of the Leper King. We have spend almost 4 hours exploring these temples inside Angkor Thom as we exit to the Victory Gate we stopped to these two opposite temples Thommanom and Chau Say Thevoda both are just small temples and almost similar in features. After these two temples we proceed to Ta Keo temple the size of this temple is almost the same as Bayon. So it's about pass 1 in the afternoon, the weather is really hot and we're really hungry too by the time we finished exploring the last temple, so we ask our driver to bring us to one of the nicest place to eat. So he brought us to this Ta Prohm Khmer Food. Not so fancy but they really have a good local dishes to enjoy. After
lunch we continued our temple exploration started with Ta Prohm which I believe the movie Tomb Raider was filmed. After Ta Prohm we proceed to our much awaited temple, guess what! Angkor Wat. So there we are in front of Angkor Wat and the weather is I guess around 36º-37º it was damned so hot and we feel like dehydrated but still we wanted to look nice in the pictures so we had a quick retouched before we started our tour. Angkor Wat is significantly big compared to other temples and so exploring it, is quite challenging especially if there are also many tourist around and the weather is extremely hot. But anyway this is what we bargained for, so we still continued on our feet to explore this very special temple. If you're gonna ask me what is so special about Angkor Wat, well speaking for myself, the place apart from being the biggest well I find the architectural features of this temple more detailed than the other temples. From what I read they call this "temple-mountain" dedicated to the Vishnu (Hindu god). We were supposed to have our last stop at Phnom Bakheng for sunset, however we can't
hardly walked anymore so we decided to wrapped our day 2 tour in Siem Reap with tired feet and burned skin. After having some few hours of cleaning up and resting we decided to take a buffet dinner at Amazon Angkor. The restaurant has a good ambiance although they served mostly local dishes, they also have some few western but the taste is very local. The good thing about this restaurant is they have Apsara dance performance on stage, which is really nice. After our dinner, since the night is still young at least for someone like us who lives in the urban jungle, we decided to go first to night market and after our window shopping we decided to drink a glass of nice Blue Hawaii for me and Frozen Margarita for my friend for a good sleep.
Day 3, we were up early for the Angkor Wat sunrise surprise. Yeah, we were like zombies walking in the dark entrance of Angkor Wat, everyone is holding their own source of lights as the road entrance is really rough and bumpy. Mind you the place is really crowded with tourist as they too are also wanting an Angkor Wat
sunrise surprise. Don't worry it was really cool being there, watching the sun goes up behind the three towers of Angkor Wat. And so it was, our day started early with temple it has also ended with temple. That day we visited the East Baray starting with Pre Rup then goes to Banteay Srei then had a quick stop to some road side stores selling mostly palm products like candy and syrup. Then we had lunch at Ancient Khmer Restaurant which is just opposite to Ta Som temple, after that we went to Neak Pean which is surrounded by what they called mythical lake, followed by significantly big temple Preah Khan as we again enter Angkor Thom from the North Gate then again exit to South Gate where you can actually play around with the monkeys. After our temple overload during that day, we went to a much more familiar place the most crowded and noisy of all, the Pub Street. Were we had our dinner at Khmer Family Restaurant and had some drinks at In Touch Bar and Restaurant with live band.
Day 4 in Siem Reap this time we were up late not because we had some
drinks that night but because we only have half day itinerary. Guess what it's temple visit again for the nth time. That time we went to see the temples at Rolous Group, started with Lolei, followed by Preah Ko then Bakong our last temple. Before going back to our hotel we stopped to Artisans D'Angkor, it's more like an art gallery and shop. Then in the afternoon we went to Cambodian Cultural Village, by the name itself it is a museum and theme park, what's so nice about this place is they have some stage plays that shows the different cultures of Cambodia. A good treat if you're overloaded with temple visits.
My Siem Reap visit is really one memorable indeed. There are many other things to do in this place, we only had a few days and understanding their customs and tourism existence through their different temples are some things you should learn and understand. The beauty of early architecture combined with religious belief, that's what the Ancient Siem Reap is. How they preserve their culture that's how they also preserve their temples.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.054s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0314s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb