The Temples of Angkor, Cambodia

After a very brief stop in Phnom Penh, mainly to take a small overnight breather and see a 90kg diamond encrusted gold Buddha, we headed off across Cambodia to Siem Reap – the home of Angkor Wat.  A couple of things we noticed about Cambodia on our excursion across the country was how rural, flat and wet everywhere was; we weren’t really sure what to expect, but it was quite pleasant.

As we’re a little crazy and felt we had to conquer all of Angkor in a day we decided that it was a great idea to be there for sunrise; what we didn’t know when we made this decision was that that meant a 4:15am start.  It was good fun though, as we made our way down the unlit, pitch black roads in the back of our tuk tuk to Angkor Wat (the main attraction).  After getting our entrance photo cards we stopped and were pointed toward the Wat.  Our driver had given us a torch so we could just about see as we headed for the recommended spot to see the sunrise.  Obviously we were a little early, but it did mean we got a great spot a the edge of the little pond.  As the sun rose we were awestruck by the magnificent building emerging from the darkness.  Our first sight of Angkor Wat was really something.

After this we wandered around Angkor Wat for a few hours.  It is amazing, absolutely every piece of wall, ceiling and balustrade inside and outside the buildings is covered in carvings.  Some depict events back in the 9th-13th century, others mythical creatures – all are in great detail.  Apparently at the height of the Khmer (Angkor people) Empire, there was a population in the city of 1 million people, while at the same time London had on 50 thousand.

After a spot of breakfast and chatting to some local school kids (which you find everywhere trying to sell you one thing or another) we headed off on the ‘Grand Circuit’.  It’s a tour of about 35km around some of the temples nearby to Angkor.  We saw absolutely loads of temples and mini-cities of all sizes, shapes, heights, with and without pools.  Even though we had all day we only saw about a dozen of what must have been about one hundred.  Our favourites were:

• Angkor Wat – just fantastic (biggest religious building in the world!)
• Bayon – 216 stone faces looking down on you.
• Ta Prohm – the jungle reclaiming the temple
• Pre Rup – great climb to the top

We also saw (in anti-clockwise order round the circuit!) – Banteay Kdei, Sras Srang, Eastern Mebon, Preah Neak Pean, North Gate of Angkor Thom, Terrace of the Leper King, Terrace of Elephants, Phimeanakas, Baphoun, Phomn Bakheng.

By sunset we were exhausted, and unfortunately the weather was starting to turn ugly.  At our last temple, where we could have stayed for sunset, it started to pour with rain.  So that was that – we dashed back to our tuk tuk, which was transformed into rain mode (plastic raincovers round the sides) and we hurtled back to base for some sleep.

We could have spent more days at Angkor taking it a bit easier and seeing some of the further afield temples.  We were really surprised by the number of people who come to Cambodia just for Angkor, especially Americans (it seemed like the greatest population of them outside of the States!), but if you’ve come as far as South East Asia you’ve got to go and see the spectacle of Angkor.

The Mekong Delta, from Vietnam to Cambodia by boat

We had a great few days travelling from Ho Chi Minh city to Phnom Penh in Cambodia.  As usual, we set off extremely early last Friday and got on board a little boat to cruise out of Ho Chi Minh City.  It was great to see all the tiny little houses along the river side, yet also quite sad to see how much rubbish was floating around.  Then, as we went further out of the city, it became noticably richer, with houses 6 times the size of the other ones!  The divide between rich and poor is very obvious.

We continued to cruise along for a few hours before visiting some of the Mekong Delta islands.  This was the highlight for us.  We visited a little honey place and sampled the food, as well as a little fruit place.  A tiny wooden boat took us down a weedy little stream to the other end of the island, which was pretty cool – something we haven’t seen anywhere else.  Then, after a long bus journey, we got to the ferry crossing.  This was very odd… it involved getting off the bus and standing amongst loads of motorbikes (revving at our ankles) waiting to get on the ferry.  Once on the ferry, the locals were all looking at us and trying to take photos with their camera phones!  Again, the other side, we battled our way off with the motorbikes and hiked down the road to find our bus (easier said than done).

One thing we have noticed after careful observation of other Brits (and too much spare time ourselves), is that British people love systems.  I know I’m generalising here, but it seems that we don’t mind if things are a little late, as long as there is a system in place.  While the Germans on our tour were questioning the time of arrival of the bus, we were questioning why we had to get off the bus, why it went on a different ferry and why all the ferries left the port at the same time.  Anyway, I’m going off track here!

So we eventually got to our hotel and grabbed some food.  We can recommend a restaurant that you should not visit in the Mekong Delta region, as it left us throwing up all night!!!  Unfortunately, having both been up all night feeling ill, we were unable to visit the floating markets the next morning and just joined the others on the bus later on to get to our floating hotel.  It was pretty basic, but cool – a hotel which is like a boat really!

Finally, the following day, we got our ‘fast boat’ to Phnom Penh in Cambodia.  It certainly wasn’t fast, but the scenery was lovely.  We went passed some lovely little villages, particularly on the Cambodian side of the border.   This made the whole journey worthwhile.  The locals must see that boat go by every day, but they were so excited to see it and all jumped up and waved as we came passed!  It was our first river border crossing as well, so that was cool.  Oh and we got another 1 hour bus after the boat as well, to get to the centre of town.  Exhausting, but well worth it!

A chocolate digestive would go down a treat right now with a nice cuppa tea, but I’ll have to wait a little while for that won’t I?!