We woke up to an overcast day in Siem Reap, which was a
blessing as we planned to spend the day exploring the temples of Angkor
Wat. We had a delicious buffet breakfast
then I went outside and easily hired a tuk-tuk driver to drive us around for
the day, at a cost of fifteen dollars.
We piled in the tuk-tuk and were soon put-put-putting down the road, along
the way stopping for gas which was delivered from an old Coke bottle from a
roadside vendor. The entrance to the
park is only a few kilometers outside of town so after a short ride we were at
the gate and bought our three day tickets for $40 (kids under 12 get in for
free) and continued along to the main road, which was full of fellow tuk-tukkers,
people on bicycles, people walking, large and small tour busses, lots of
motorcycles and even a troupe of monkeys wandering around the side of the road
looking for handouts.
When we were back in Canada trying to decide where to go on
our big trip, our initial plan was not Southeast Asia. I picked up a travel book from the library
and after Ana and I saw pictures of Angkor Wat, and all the other amazing sites
in the region, our decision was made. So
we were both very excited to finally be here and on the verge of experiencing
this exceptional site.
As this area was the home of over a million people which
endured for several centuries, the geographical area is massive. Fortunately most of the restored and most magnificent
temples are within a comparably small area, in fact it is quite possible to
explore by bicycle if you are willing to put in long days and are able to take
the heat.
I think it is fair to say that it’s simply impossible to do
justice to this incredible place with mere words and photos. It is a place that has to be experienced in
person and, for us, I think it was better that we did not do a lot of research
beforehand and really did not have any expectations as this allowed us to be
completely blown away. For this first
day we were able to explore about eight individual temples including the godly
Angkor Wat which is huge, magnificent and otherworldly. Of course, this is a very busy place so there
was no moment when you could feel like Indiana Jones discovering a forgotten
ruin for the first time, but if you timed your photos carefully you could get some
stunning shots sans people!
Most of the guide books recommend starting your day with a
dawn sunrise experience at one of the temples and continuing to dusk, but I
seriously can’t imagine being able to put in that long of a day. By 3pm we were all completely spent so we tuk-tukked
back to an area called “Pub Street” in the central part of town and had a big
lunch and some cold drinks. We then
wandered around the busy streets and found a place to rent bicycles – after our
lovely biking experience in Luang Prabang this was our new preferred method of
transport. We found out immediately that
there are only two rules for vehicular traffic in Cambodia:
1. Drive on the right (when it’s convenient)
2. Avoid death
The roads are chaotic and when you are on a bike with a kid
balanced on the back, with no helmets and not knowing where you are going, you
find yourself in an adrenaline fueled, eat or be eaten, heart pumping race for
survival. We did manage to get back to
the hotel unscathed, but knew right away that bicycle transport here was not
the way to go.
After a refreshing swim and a couple hours at the pool we
returned to our room and had a backpacker supper (noodle soups, lunch
leftovers, crackers) but supplemented with some freshly boiled corn I was able
to buy from a street vendor at a big music festival that was happening just
down from the hotel. He was also selling
fried crickets, but I had promised Magnus we were going to sample those together
so I held off on bringing a bag of bugs back to the room.
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