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Published: July 21st 2006
Thursday July 6th Paul - Let me start off by saying what a fantastic day it was today. Rolled out of bed at 8am after watching France beat Portugal in a drab game. Decided we would hire bikes today to take us round Angkor as we are fitness fanatics...
Haggled down some pretty decent bikes to a good price before setting off. The temples are about 8km from Siem Reap and the complex itself is huge. The main group of temples are contained within a 30km by 25km square! Yikes!
Got lost on the way (Laura was directing...) but a friendly policeman turned us around. We arrived at a huge moat that circled the main temple, Angkor Wat. We couldn't see the temple from where we were as it is surrounded by jungle. The whole entire area is a jungle! Cycled round the moat for about five minutes until a temple slowly came into view. It was incredible. To make the spectacle even better, ten monks were walking across the bridge towards Angkor Wat. Fantastic. We walked over the bridge and into the main courtyard and the view was breath taking. I've never seen anything like
it in my life. It was amazing. Sat down and soaked in the view for a while before making our way to the Wat itself.
Inside was just as fantastic. See the pictures for the full glory but it was just like the temples you see in Indiana Jones. We climbed up to the top for some fantastic views. The climb was pretty perilous, if this was England there would be no way you would be allowed to do it. The guide book said there have been a few fatalities and I'm not surprised! Ambled slowly back to our bikes and decided to take the long way round to the next temple.
It was at this point that we noticed we were probably the only tourists biking. Everyone else had either hired a tuktuk or was on a tour bus. It was also at this point we realised how many tour groups were here and how much money everyone had compared to us. They were throwing it round like no tomorrow. Of course all this had a negative effect on us as we couldn't buy water at the normal price, instead it was now twice that! And lots
of the children would ask for dollars and get really pissed off if you didn't give it to them. It was frustrating as when we wanted to pay normal price we were just greeted with contempt. Of course there were nice Khmers who would sell us water for the usual price but that's not the point. Stupid tourists just flashing their cash about is driving prices up and causing a lot of contempt and it's very very evident here.
Arrived at Prasat Kraven and had it virtually to ourselves so it was very peaceful. After this we biked up to Sras Srang, a huge lake, where a sweet kid gave me a free bracelet for teaching him how to play "Rock, paper, scissors". Across the way was Bansay Kdei, a temple that Laura and I both loved. It's completely in ruins and there was practically no one there. Wandered around for a while before talking to a guy who was selling books. He wanted to swap my Real Madrid t-shirt for TWO Angkor Wat t-shirts. Now I was very tempted as there has been some negative comments about my Real Madrid shirt recently. I've been quite upset and have
struggled to hold back tears at certain points. However the Angkor t-shirts were very tacky so I declined his offer.
Headed over to Ta Prohm, about 5km down the road, the original Tomb Raider temple. And it didn't disappoint! Not just because Angelina Jolie has been here either! Jungle vines and huge twisted tree trunks broke through the temple at every corner. It was really atmospheric. The fact that it had also just started raining and there was a rumble of thunder in the distance also helped. Spent about an hour climbing up the walls, jumping around and generally pretending to be Indiana Jones. It was great.
As the food here is so expensive, Laura and I managed to haggle some cheap food off a local family. I think most of the people here really like us as we are biking around the temples just like they are. They all seem to wave and try and chat to us. We're not the rich foreigners who have tour bus's or cars so we're liked. It's a nice feeling. It was getting late in the day now so we headed to our final temple of the day - the
Bayon. All the tour groups had gone to watch the sun set so we had it all to ourselves. Fantastic. Well, nearly to ourselves, a security guard kept coming round to tell us the temple was closing... whatever.
The Bayon was brilliant, from a distance it looks like a huge temple that is crumbling down but on closer inspection there are hundreds of creepy faces carved into the rock. Best look at the photo's to see what I mean.
Right your probably bored of reading how great the temples are. That's the last one anyway so you can breath easy again. I won't bother explaining how fantastic they all are you'll just have to trust me and look at the pictures. Right, so we cycled back to the hotel and totaled our miles to about 25 for the day. Not bad. Laura's bum certainly felt it (as she complained to me for the WHOLE EVENING!).
Amusing asides for the day:
- Our hotel dude was unsure how to turn on our hot water despite having worked in the hotel for 2 years.
- Speaking of "dudes" if you love men in sandals, you'll love Angkor.
And let's face it, who doesn't love that look? Laura spent a good 5 minutes pointing out some legendary Germans in socks and sandals combo. Jurgen the German would be proud.
- Down a random dirt track we encountered some wild monkeys and they looked so cute... except when we biked past them they started bearing their teeth and chasing us! Rabies alert!!!
Friday 7th July Laura - Woke up at the ungodly hour of 5am to meet our tuktuk driver for the day. We weren't planning on getting a tuktuk in Angkor, but it was part of the deal of getting a cheap room in our hotel. Nothing comes without a catch!
Anyway, Mr Tuktuk (I have forgotten his name) took us to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise. There were quite a few other tourists there but it was very quiet and peaceful. We took far too many photos, but it was very nice.
After that we had a bit of a debate with the driver because he wanted to charge more than twice the agreed price to take us to one of the temples outside of Angkor. We were a
bit annoyed but eventually managed to settle on a price, which actually seemed quite reasonable when we saw the 'road' he had to drive down to get us there. He also came very close to being bitten by a snake at one point, which was crossing the road (all the temples are built around a jungle) and jumped up to bite! So he kind of deserved the money!
The first site he took us to was almost 50km from Siem Reap, called Kbal Spean. It consisted of a set of stone carvings in a river bed at the top of a jungle hill. The walk up there was really cool, although we saw another snake (luckily a very small one that froze with fear, no king cobras thank god!). There was a very sweet old man at the top who enthusiastically pointed out all the impressive carvings to us, even though he couldn't speak a word of English. And he didn't even ask for any money for his efforts. We were very grateful, especially as he lead us down a safe path to a waterfall, so that we could avoid the many landmines that are scattered about!
The
next stop of the day was a temple calle Banteay Srey, around 40km from Siem Reap. It was quite a big ruined temple, as impressive as usual. It was so bloody hot by this time though that we didn't look around for long. We jumped back in our tuktuk (with natural air con) and drove back to Angkor.
Back in Angkor, we went to a few more temples (Pre Rup, Ta Som, Preah Kahn, Baphuon and Bakheng). I won't go into detail about them all but they were very impressive, every single one of them! Some bigger than others, some more ruined than others, and some with more trees growing out of them than others. They didn't have too many tourists looking around them either, which was good for us and added to the atmosphere.
The last place I mentioned (Bakheng) is a temple on top of a hill, with really amazing views over Angkor and over a lake. It is where all the tour groups gather for sunset. So we left before sunset and headed back to Angkor Wat. We climbed the precarious steps to the top and settled down to watch the sun come down. It
was very serene and a pleasant way to end the day. Unfortunately we were thrown out about half an hour before it actually set. I can understand this, because it would be very unsafe to climb down those steps in the dark! Nevertheless, it was quite irritating and judging from the looks on the faces of other tourists, they thought so too!
We were taken back to the hotel, via the area where all the ghastly 'souvenier supermarkets' and expensive hotels are. We made the driver laugh by saying "here will do" outside Raffles, where it apparently costs $1000 a night! Slightly out of our budget that one...
We showered and ate then collapsed into bed. We were so tired, but it was a brilliant day! Twelve hours of templing around. Now that is keen!
Saturday July 8th Paul - Got up not feeling very well. Think I've got a slight stomach bug so that put a stop to us biking to the temples again today. We managed to get a VERY cheap tuktuk driver for $5 so we weren't too bothered. Decided to do the temples that we loved from the first day
and a couple of others that we hadn't seen already. That would mean we'd pretty much seen all the temples! Aren't we great!?
First stop was Ta Prohm again at midday. Ridiculously hot so we didn't do as much climbing over the ruins today, just soaked up the atmosphere in the shade. We then walked a couple of miles into the jungle to find another temple, Ta Nei, that was in ruins just like Ta Prohm. There was no one there except a couple of creepy women who wanted to show us round. We weren't sure whether they would want some money but we followed them round anyway and they enthusiastically pointed out all the sights. They smiled and pointed the way out, waving manically as we left.
On the way to Ta Keo we saw thousands upon thousands of red ants walking two by two to collect some leaves. It was impressive as they were very organised and walked perfectly side by side. Not so nice was a huge spider that had spun a web that spanned the path. Laura was especially not pleased with this occurance but still managed to muster the courage to take a
picture.
After Ta Keo our tuktuk driver told us about his previous job as a teacher at a school that educates women about HIV. He told us how the vast majority of rural women are not educated on the issue and when their husbands go to the city to find work they come back and give HIV to their wives. It was very sad to hear about it and also very sad to hear that our tuktuk driver had to stop being a teacher because he wasn't earning enough money. Not a pleasant story.
I wasn't feeling too good at this point due to my stomach bug so we had a quick last look around the Bayon at the huge smiling faces before heading back to Siem Reap, waving bye bye to Angkor Wat on the way. Managed to haggle a store vendor down on the way out for a couple of sovenier t-shirts. Two for $4 and 2 coca colas! Bargin! Although we had to work hard for those coca colas, big smiles and everything! Had some crappy chips for tea as I wasn't allowed to eat anything fancy as Doctor Laura said so.
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Mum
non-member comment
No wonder you got a stomach bug if you nicked some of the poor locals lunch - taking the food out of the mouths of babes. Hope you are feeling a lot better Paul. Please be careful of all those nasty snakes and spiders - i would run a mile. Mike is now in Cardiff and has been on day trips to Bath and London with some of the students - probably never heard of again. Have sent u an email. xx