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Published: October 25th 2008
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Angkor Watt @5.30am
Main temple entrance. So..
arrived in Phnom Penh after a long, cramped mini bus journey from Laos, and after being dropped off in the 'backpacker' area Gareth scouted round for rooms... all very very cheap at $2+ per room per night but we decided to stay somewhere a little nicer after having stayed in a bamboo hut with no electricity for a week! We ended up at a very nice budget hotel owned by a Camboian Aussie chap near the river and about 1km walk from all the riverside action.
Unfortunately Gareth was again summouned to do some more design work so the first couple of days were spent on the computer..
We then spent a day going to the 'Killing Fields' and the Genocide Museum (which Gareth wanted to see, I was quite happy not to visit a place of torture). This gave us a huge insight as to what the people of Cambodia endured during the Khmer Rouge period. An eye-opener for sure, but a bit too gruesome for me. Well worth reading up on as a lot of the people involved are still around awaiting trial. Very recent stuff.
The next day we visited the Royal Palace and
the Silver Pagoda, which gets its name as the floor is made from 5000 tiles of pure silver, but its mostly covered up with carpet to protect it. The palace and Pagoda are very beautiful, especially the gold with diamond encrusted buddhas in the pagoda!! mmm.. sparkly....!!
To give us a flavour of what we would see in Angkor we also took a short trip to the National Museum which houses a millennium's worth of stone carvings etc from the Angkor era. Cool stuff, but they dont give much info about the pieces, just say what period its from, not where the piece came from etc..
Spent a day sort of going around the city and up to the top of a huge mall to over look the city. Very much like HoChiMinh City. People here are very alike and the way the place looks and feels is the same. They even use the roads like the Vietnamise people... IDIOTS!! However they're a lot nicer than the Vietnamese, not so scamming. Some of the kids are mind!
Quite a nice place over all.. more westernised than what we thought. Loads of expats from OZ, USA and UK
setting up home here to which it gave a very continental feel about it. Well at least around the river front to where we were staying. Problem is after spending a few weeks in Laos and in a place which had very little comfort we found ourselves being drawn to these places which offered huge American sized portions but at just under UK prices. Very nice but sort of regret it now!!!
Anyway..
We were going to head to the beach at Sihanoukville but we had spent a little over the budget due to nice hotel and very nice food so decided to go straight to Siem Reap, nice short 6hr bus journey..
Siem Reap is a great town and its a shame that it only seems to be a stop off point for people visiting the nearby temples, as it seems to have a lot to offer. Great eaterys, on the aptly named 'Pub/Bar Street' and even better markets etc. We loved it there. You would think your in France or Spain if it weren't for all the Cambodians serving you. Except the prices for food and drink is so cheap, much cheaper then the Capital. We
would have liked to spend a week or so longer here to just chill if we had not spent so much in Phnom Penh.
We found a cheap good hotel just about half a km from the main market and it came complete with a massive crocodile farm in the back garden!! I counted about 41 crocs that I could see, then from the top of the hotel counted loads more!! Weird. Poor crocs getting fattened up and sold for their skin.
We chilled for a day then arranged with our tuk-tuk man to take us for sunrise at Angkor Wat. Nightmare waking up at 4am with it raining outside we were sort of having second thoughts but... rain died down so went ahead... and we were glad. What a spectacular thing to witness. Stunning, in a word. Check the purple picture. This picture is untouched and it was how it was at 5.30am on the Angkor Wat main temple walkway.
We perused around the temple grounds for a while which was very impressive. Noticed a couple od sad things.. the Khmer Rouge while in power chopped of ALL the heads of all the Budhas statues in
the all the temples, very sad as this you tend to notice a lot. After Angkor Wat we then went to Angkor Thom (a much larger temple ground area holding many smaller temples and the old Royal Palace), which had one of the most memorable temples, Bayon, with four-sided Buddah faces on almost every corner! Very Indiana Jones stylee!
The best temple was Ta Prohm, the one from Tomb Raider, its half temple, half jungle! Trees spill over the walls, through the stonework, and inside the stones are crumbling as nature takes back what was hers..
We had a short lunch break and decided to carry on to some other temples as we still wanted to see more and we had time, but after getting to the East Mebon temple and after we just got up the first set of stairs Mother Nature unleashed her wrath and all the rain in the heavens came pouring down.. Time to go!!!! Someone's trying to tell us something!!! Thank god we weren't at the top of one of the temples with a hundred stairs!
We spent the next day relaxing at the pool of a 5*star hotel that the Danish
boys had recommened. Gareth again spent the day on the computer..!!! The next day it was off to Bangkok... Keep watching!!
More pics also uploaded in the Laos blog!
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