Cambodia Day 4 & 5 – Angkor temples & Siem Reap

Ta Prohm

When 4am rolled around, we were both glad that we were asleep by 9pm the night before – but it didn’t make getting up any easier. We had a 4:50am departure to go and check out Ta Prohm (aka the Tomb Raider Temple, because in between collecting Cambodian children Angelina Jolie also filmed at this temple) for sunrise as apparently all the crowds are at Angkor Wat and you can have the place to yourselves.

The night before we had pre-ordered our breakfast and sure enough it was there waiting for us – a sizeable fruit platter, baguettes with jam and butter (but no knife) and two giant iced coffees. We felt like VIPs cruising through the streets, for about the first 10 minutes then it got bloody freezing! I think all of the bug spray combined with the pitch blackness outside combined to make the wind chill factor far higher than anticipated.

It was busy with tuk tuks and busses heading into the complex – fortunately for us we peeled off and headed away from the crowds and we were getting excited thinking we were onto a winner with our plan. Then it all got a bit hairy! The downside of being the only ones heading our way was that there was no other tuk tuk guiding the way, and I think our driver was still half-asleep because he almost killed us.

The main roads in between the temples are fairly straight and in ok condition, but he seemed to forget that there were any corners coming up – so when one eventually did, he was going waaaay to fast – turned in waaaaay too late and scared the crap out of all of us. I honestly didn’t think we were going to make it – they are about as nimble as a reliant robin – so as he braked and turned it just kind of skidded forwards, directly towards a fucking HUGE tree – which I only saw briefly as he managed to turn enough to avoid it, but the back of the tuk tuk was still swinging out in the dirt on the side of the road and I thought we were going to clip it as we came past.

Hungry trees.

Luckily – we just clipped a few branches and he managed to swerve back onto the road before hitting anything. Anu looked around to see if either of us had rolled out and looked a bit sheepish as I shouted at him “that was a bit close!”. Once we pulled up at Ta Prohm he got off the bike, let out a big sigh of relief and was pretty apologetic so we let him off.

There was only one other van there but it was still pitch black so we woofed down our food and set off into the temple. It was only half-light outside as sunrise was still half an hour away, which was fine as we skipped down the path towards the main entrance – but as soon as we got inside, it was pitch black again.

Almost immediately a few teeny bats (pipistrills I think?) whizzed past our heads and you could hear dozens more squeaking in the corners and roof arches. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around – not even people checking tickets, so we nervously made our way through as you literally couldn’t see anything without the light of the camera and phone. I turned one corner and scared the shit out of myself by walking into what I thought was some kind of headless apparition sat in wait for me – as it turned out it was just an old Buddha statue in the middle of the floor!

We explored the temple at great length as the sun came up and only saw a couple of other people the whole time. It was much different to the ones we’d seen the day before in that it was still partially in ruins, and had loads of giant strangler fig trees growing through many of the exterior walls so looked exactly how a lost jungle city should do. Lisa did her best Lara Croft impressions for a while, but I didn’t feel much like Indiana Jones with the beard and my flip flops on.

Epic steps.

After Ta Prohm we headed around the corner to Ta Keo and it looked pretty epic. There were hundreds of steep steps to clamber up to reach the summit – but not before having to run another gauntlet of children trying to sell you postcards. They are pretty harmless, and actually fairly amusing as they recite their well-rehearsed pitches and they don’t usually stalk you for too long once you’ve said no a couple of times. It is always quite funny as they always call me Sir and Lisa always gets “Hey Ladeeeee…”.

By the time we left that temple, and had visited a couple more it was only 10am – and we were both exhausted and the sun was out making it almost unbearable outside of the shade. It was good that our fare also included as much cold bottled water as we could drink as I think I was sweating it out just as quickly.

Angkor Wat at sunset - bliss.

We managed to push on and see a couple more which weren’t all that interesting in comparison to the previous ones, Bantay Srei was good, but mainly as it is a mini Ta Prohm – and also a large series of pools which have retained their water since the 13^th century or something equally ridiculous, where the Kings of the old Khymer used to bathe. It looked really fancy – but you have to stand at a viewing area 150m away and walk over 1km to reach it, in the burning hot midday sun.

After ignoring multiple amputee bands (we had no money!), dodging hundreds of postcard peddling children, market stall owners who chase you down and make you promise to buy anything from their stall exclusively and seeing another 8 temples (I think) we tapped out and got Anu to take us home, but arranged for him to take us out again later that afternoon – we seemed to be paying $15 for the day regardless of how many trips we took so thought we would take advantage and try to see sunset at Angkor Wat. We got back and managed to sleep for a good three hours or so – which was very welcome!

Sunrise photo-seekers

By this point – our new travelling companions had made it into town, so we arranged to meet up for drinks after we’d returned from Angkor. We jumped back into the Tuk Tuk about 5pm and headed for the temple. The place was crazy busy – going in both directions, tour groups and busses everywhere – a row of a dozen armed guards with machine guns at the entrance, and it was still really hot.

We battled through wave after wave of Koreans ambling around like they were on a funeral procession (we are all about efficient sightseeing) and made it inside.

First off let me say that Angkor Wat is pretty spectacular – it’s surrounded by a 200m wide moat and the outside walls are kilometers long in each direction, and is the largest religious building in the world. You can see the towering central temple pillars from the road outside, and as there is nothing else around aside from jungle it is no wonder so many people flock here to see it. It was getting late and fortunately many of them were already leaving and not too many heading inside so we thought we might have a chance to be on our own a little – and we did find a couple of quiet corners on our way around which was pretty cool.

There was a big queue for the central towers by the time we got there, and it was packed inside so we just looked at them from below before finding our way back to the main entrance side to see the sunset. There were monkeys running around the grounds, one woman actually tried to stroke one and it swiped at her – we both hoped she’d contracted something or at least had a rabies shot before coming, the stupid cow.

We stopped and took a few pics as the sun was going down – trying our best to camouflage the massive fuck-ugly bright green tarpaulin they have inexplicably put RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the main doors. Obviously restoration work is fairly ongoing on an 800+ year old stone temple, but it kind of ruins the look of the ancient-ness...

Having said all that, we still liked this temple – but the it’s meant to be the main attraction and was a bit of a let down for us really, mainly due to how many people were there. It just kind of felt like a bit of an anti-climax. Maybe if Angkor Wat had been the first temple we’d been to on the first morning it would be different, but after all the build up and enjoying the other places pretty much on our own we found ourselves wanting to leave as quickly as possible!

"Sunrise"

We found our ride, and headed back to town – straight to the night markets. After a surprising turn of events lead to us actually buying some trinkets (I hope everyone likes Cambodian tat!) we met Chris and Holly at the funky Island Bar inside, had some tasty Mexican food (as you do when in Cambodia?!) and then a few drinks on the aptly named Pub Street before getting in far too late considering another 4am start beckoned.

What felt like about 45 seconds passed before the sound of our alarms simultaneously ringing out jolted us out of bed. Today we were starting with sunrise at Angkor Wat – it seemed like it would be one of those must-see things, but having seen yesterday how busy it was and knowing that most day trippers start there we were dubious about actually enjoying it (the catch 22 of simultaneously hating other tourists but being there with the giant SLR camera snapping away is a constant struggle for me).

On the plus side, Anu didn’t try to introduce us first hand to the native flora an fauna of Cambodia this time and also he was dressed rather smartly today – we thought possibly to try and impress us to make up for his attempted murder.

Central towers from inside

We arrived pretty early and it was already heaving. We filed in line with the hordes heading across the moat-bridge into the temple. The best view is probably as soon as you get in as you can see the whole place, whereas closeup the size of it doesn’t quite come across. It was packed there though, so we headed closer to the lake where we’d taken some good pictures the night before.

The amount of people clambering around it to get the reflective sunrise shot was comedic. It looked like the crowd at a 18^th hole water hazard of a major golf championship (tourists and golf fans look fairly similar too actually, come to think of it). I contemplated wading in waist deep in front of them all but to be honest, it had been raining all night and was still really overcast so there wasn’t going to be any kind of sunrise photo-op.

Sure enough – it just got lighter steadily over the next 30 minutes or so, yet everyone stayed put just in case the clouds suddenly parted just for them. We left before reality set in and tried to get up the towers before the crowds – but unfortunately they were shut for another hour and we didn’t want to pay the dodgy looking guys hanging around the entrance $10 to sneak us in – although plenty of people were.

Angkor Thom gate

Keen to avoid the plague of tourists soon to descend on the rest of Angkor Wat – we hotfooted it back to Anu and headed to the Angkor Thom complex which contains a few temples in itself, including Bayon which we were looking forward to. By this point the traffic was nuts – we waited 20 minutes just to get out of one of the gates away from Angkor Wat, and there was a queue of at least 200 mini-buses, tuk tuks and cars waiting to get in. We were so glad we had time to do it all over the three days and had most of the places to ourselves more or less.

We reached Bayon and not a tour bus in sight! It felt like we were in a race against time to sightsee as much as possible before another wave of Hana Tour buses arrived – like a giant Crystal Maze Aztec Zone challenge, all we were missing was Richard O’Brien and a giant glass crystal filled with foil at the end of our day.

Bayon looked amazing from the outset. It’s many towers are adorned with giant faces of Buddha – four on each tower looking down over every part of the temple. The majority of the other temples had all of the Buddha faces removed or destroyed by previous occupants following a different religion so this was a treat!

Bayon Temple

The upper area gave pretty good views of the surrounding jungle (as many of the temples do), but the insides were a bit of a maze so we didn’t really venture too far. The outside walls were only partially constructed which we actually preferred a little to the ones covered in scaffolding being rebuilt. We hadn’t realised until the night before, but pretty much all of the temples we’d been to bar Angkor Wat had been abandoned when they were re-discovered by a Frenchman in the late 1780s and were in complete disrepair – covered in thick, dense jungle and had collapsed. Going there now, you’d never have guess as all the roads are clear and all the jungle has been cut back – only a few, like Ta Prohm and Bantay Srei where the trees are actually growing through the walls have they been left almost as-found, which I think is why we preferred them.

At this point we had a small mishap with the camera and thought it had wiped the previous weeks worth of pictures, which put us on the backfoot a little and made us just want to go back to the hotel to check it out.

I say something wildly inappropriate to get a smile

We soldiered on with a new SD card though, and walked to the Royal Palace – got halfway along the bridge and turned back as it looked like it was going to involve at least 300 steps to the top and you could see the whole thing from back there (we were pretty templed out by this point).

Next we saw the Elephant Terrace which was pretty awesome, and a bit of a change from the temples – plus it was covered in monkeys and we could sit all day watching them monkey about. After a brief and regrettable detour over the road to see another set of temples (we had to cross a river, then the path back was flooded so it took forever) we saw the Terrace of the Leper King, which was the last thing on our to-do list and we were eternally grateful for that.

It was 10am. We were broken.

Anu tried to take us to more places so we could get our monies worth – but we insisted it was time for bed, he seemed to agree (the poor guy just sleeps on the floor of the guesthouse lobby when we weren’t using him – and overnight) so we clambered back for some much needed catch up zzzzzz’s.

Bayon faces

Again, we met our new buddies for dinner and drinks on Pub Street and as we were all moving on the next day brainstormed travel ideas. We were heading to Laos whereas they were planning on going to Bangkok for a flight back to Europe. We had planned on going back to Phnom Penh, then getting another bus north east towards the southern Laos border and making our way up the entire country. After a bit of research however, we decided to join them in heading to Bangkok where we could pick up a sleeper train to the Thai/Laos border near the Laos capital Vientiane and go from there. It’d mean seeing less of Laos, but from what we’d read there wasn’t as much to see in the south & it was less developed and we were already a few days behind schedule after staying in Vietnam longer than planned.

After some beers and much discussion we opted for a $10 ticket each which combined a large VIP coach to the Cambodia/Thailand border at Poipet – and a mini-van connection to Bangkok on the other side. Loads of companies had deals claiming you’d be on a nice big comfy bus the whole way – only to be presented with an overcrowded minivan at the Thai side or the option of waiting around for your large bus, which would ultimately never come.

We’d all read horror stories about this particular journey – but it didn’t really seem like we had any other choice as all the booking agents in town seemed to be selling tickets for the same deal, just at different prices. At least we’d be in it together…

Elephant Terrace monkeys - he knows kung fu