Mystified!!!

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Thunder....Thunder...Thunder Cats...........Hoooooooo!!!!

Ok not quite Thundercats but walking around these ancient temples I thought an encounter with Mumrar could be possible.

So here we are Siem Reap one of the highlights of our trip around South East Asia.!! Siem Reap is home to The Ancient temples of Angkor and the mighty Angkor Wat the mother of all religous monuments.

The town of Siem Reap itself is a nice town to spend a few days without the temples but only 6km North and you can find yourself on a crusade worthy of Indiana Jones.....So a couple of bicycles later we were hot on the trail.

Nic - There are so many Wats/temples in the area that you really need to spend more than a day exploring, so we opted for the 3 day ticket and took our time. Being the tight backpackers that we are, we optd not to pay for an auto to drive us around for the day, and instead hired the aforementioned bicycles....much cheaper!

The first day was spent taking in some of the smaller and less well preserved sights on the grand circuit, which ended up totalling over 36km! We ended the day at Pra Thom - made famous by the recent film of "Tomb Raider''. This old temple is slowly being consumed by nature and in constant risk of collapse. The trees grow through and over the walls and make a massive solid structure somehow seem fragile and weak....and compared to the size of the trees the once magnificent temple now seems quite small! Out of all the temples this was t be our favourate as the atmosphere surrounding this place is really mytical!

Second day, 4.15am and the alarm goes off...uuurrrrggghh! We'd decided it would be good idea to get to the main attraction for sunrise!......only as we were on the bikes it meant leaving stupidly early! Riding in the pitch black for 6km at full speed (so as to get there while it was still dark) is ummm.....an experience, especially on a road full of potholes!!

All that manic riding was a little fruitless though as we were blessed with a really cloudy day, which soon turned into torential rain.....Guess that's what you get in the wet season though!!...nice to see the outline of it appear as it got light though!

Dan - Honestly Angkor Wat is a magnificent monument but the atmosphere there is no where near as intense as say Pra Thom or Bayon. Bayon was our second favourite and is a temple of over 200 carved faces which all seem to look at you, so has a very eerey atmosphere. Day two took us on another 30+ Km around a few of the other sites, By day three we had had enough of riding and settled for only a couple (still 25+ km though) before handing the bikes back.

So as you can understand all that hard work riding deserved to be rewarded with a nice soothing massage..!.........."you want maassagggeeeeee???" .......hell yeah...!!

So from here we head Northeast to the wild region of Ratanakiri for more rural adventure.

Us
xxx

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Photos

Yuck sweaty
This much excercise at 5am is not good!!

Sausages
Dad this is what you should have in the shop!!

Comments

[scotty]

thundercats hooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
yes dan!!! thundercats!!! i was arguing with ryan and karl the last few weeks about this!!! they say its crap tell then ill show them this!!! dont worry dan i can still see the eye of thundera from here -scotty aka wily cat !!!!