The Temples of Angkor

We left from Phnom Penh and had a short 5-6 hour bus ride up to the central Cambodian town of Siem Reap. When we arrived at the bus stop we got off the bus and were immediately swarmed by about 60 touts with tuk tuks, all aggressively trying to get us to go with them to their hotel. It was pretty crazy! They would grab our arms to get our attention, all yelling that they had the best deal in town, just trying to get to our backpacks off the bus was real work. Fortunately, for us we had pre-arranged a place to stay and our tuk tuk driver had exchanged a look and a nod with us confirming that he was there to pick us up, so he waited quietly outside the mob scene. We checked in to our hotel, had a rest and prepared our plans for an early start the next day for visiting some of the temple ruins around Siem Reap.

The next morning we woke up just before sunrise, organized some bicycles and started peddling the 8km to the first of the major temples. The quiet road wound its way lazily through the countryside and eventually opened up to reveal our first site of Angkor Wat and the massive moat that surrounds it. It is a moat that makes the castle moats of Europe look like a kid's swimming pool by comparison. We were stopped at a check point to verify our tickets, which we didn't have yet. We were so excited to start exploring these places, but that excitement was quickly squashed when we were told we would have to ride back towards Siem Reap about 5km on a different road to purchase our expensive $40, 3 day pass, urgh! We missed the sunrise on the temples as a result, but what can you do.

Once things were sorted out we eventually ended up at the temple of Bayon and it was still early enough that we had the whole place to ourselves. Bayon turned out to be a magnificent 1000 year old 3 story temple covered with carved grimacing faces everywhere you look, it was a very special place. It was surreal to have the entire temple to ourselves, which certainly enhanced the experience of exploring the many corridors, ancient bas-reliefs and of course discovering all the carved faces. This temple turned out to be the favorite of Steff's of all the temples we would visit in our three days of exploring the temples and monasteries that dotted the jungles all around Siem Reap.

The shear number and size of the ruins is what makes this area mind boggling. Our visit to this area was easily one of the highlights of our trip so far. The Angkorian period in which these temples were built spans 600 years between AD 802 and AD 1432. The more of them we saw the more apparent it became how different they all were. Roughly in the centre of the expansive ruins was the Bayon temple which would have originally sat in the middle of the city of Angkor, the capital of the Khmer empire, more than a thousand years ago that would have had over a million citizens. All of this at at a time when London would have had barely 50,000 people. To enter the city, we had to cycle through a very tall, but narrow and impressive stone gateway/city wall, which had enormous heads peering down at us. It was certainly a grand entrance, even as a ruin and since we were the only ones there so early in the morning, it left a lasting impression on us. We cycled from temple to temple through the very humide jungle, but at least while we were riding we had lovely breezes which helped cool us a little. Despite being a major tourist centre, we managed to get off the beaten track with our bikes and attempted 'off-roading' through the jungle on our rickety, almost ancient, Cambodian bikes. We were treated to discovering small makeshift Cambodian villages and even watched some men fishing in traditional fashion by throwing weighted nets into the water.

Justin's favorite temple was Ta Prohm which is undoubtedly the most atmospheric ruin at Angkor. This is due to the fact that, unlike other Angkor temples, it has been left to be swallowed up by the jungle and looks more like the way most of the temples of Angkor appeared when European explorers first stumbled upon them. The massive root systems of the jungle trees hold together much of the crumbling towers and courtyard walls which are covered in moss and lichens. The true awe of this temple is not so much the beauty of the stone work, but more the cycle of ruin, with humans first conquering nature to rapidly create and nature once again conquering humans to slowly destroy. Our 3 days exploring the temples and monuments at Angkor were truly wonderful days and certainly worth a visit when traveling in South East Asia.

After Angkor and Siem Reap, just a few kilometers West, we took an 8 hour boat trip, which left at sunrise from a small village. Our guide book described this as a lovely floating village, sounds nice. When we arrived there it turned out to be one of the poorest areas we have seen on our travels. The 'floating village' part of it was basically a few wooden homes built on empty steel drums, they were very basic. These poor families lived in temporary stilted shacks and were built, not on solid ground, but on the mud flats that extended far into the lake. These families can only live in their shacks until everything floods, once a year and then they are forced to find a home elsewhere. Some families move their shacks to dryer ground, while others move into small wooden boats, some only 5 meters long. Things felt rather desperate here and we felt slightly uncomfortable with our big backpacks and cameras in the midst of this desperate poverty.

The boat eventually set out from the 'village', completely overloaded with people and luggage, and began to make its way across the expanse of Lake Tonle Sap, a huge lake of silty brown water in the heart of Cambodia. Once we reached the other side of the lake we entered a network of rivers through rice fields and jungle, some sections barely wide enough for the boat to navigate.

After our river trip we arrived in the incredibly boring city of Battambang. There really wasn't' much to do here. Again, the guide book was really off on its description of this place as 'a city full of attractive old French colonial buildings.' Wrong! We did however enjoy a meal at a fairly nondescript restaurant on the river where actress Angelina Jolie supposedly ate during the filming of Tomb Raider. I am fairly certain that this was the most exciting and interesting thing that has ever happened in Battambang.

We left on the first bus out of there, early the next morning back to Phnom Penh.

Two new set of Photos have been posted in the Cambodian section of our Gallery for you to Enjoy. Cheers! :-)