Siem Reap-off

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After the event, not overly impressed with Siem Reap, you can't really expect much heart from a town which mainly thrives on tourist dollars, being the closest town to Angkor Wat.
For me it all started badly when we were coaxed into going to see the sunset from one of the ruins on a hill, to find the whole ruin covered in tourists waiting for the sunset, and i walked around with my bottom lip protruding like some spoit brat that didn't get her cake. The sun sets, the crowd applauds, the crowd leaves and 5minutes later, all is quiet on the hilltop ruin(it was quite funny how quicky the crowd dissipated). Note to self - the next time a tuktuk driver suggests going to see a sunset in tourist central, say no.

To be fair though, I loved Ta Prohm, the jungle temple, even though it is massively touristy. Give me a big old tree and some rotting building to take millions of bad photos of, and I'm happy. Funnily enough on the day, Linds had forgotten to bring her camera, Sarn's camera batteries went flat and mine ran out of juice too, leaving one out of four in our group with a working camera at an incredibly photogenic site. The Bayon at Angkor Thom was good also, yes, tick. Kbal Spean's riverbed carvings I thought was quite special too, as its along a stream in a wooded area on a hill. Not so many tourists here either so quieter, which helps. We'd saved Angkor Wat, the mother of all the sites till last, for Christmas day. Well, I can't pretend, call me a philistine, I wasn't impressed and it didn't get my juices going at all - maybe I was already templed out, or I didn't bother studying the history enough - or maybe I really do have problems with sharing (hoards of tourists, as you'd expect) - or maybe it's just not that great. Sarn's remark struck a chord with me as we got back on the tuktuk, all hot and bored and bothered - "Was that wank or what?". happy fuckin Christmas.

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