here is the full, stunning report on my r'cent trip to angkor wat. get y'self a beer, sit back and enjoy... Angkor WatApril 13th. On the 11 am flight to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Nice to be travelling to an exotic Asian destination without the 10-hour flight. Siem Reap is closer to the Thai border than it is to Phnom Penh, so it is only 50 minutes by air from Bangkok.
April 13th is Songkran – Thai New Year. We were worried that we wouldn’t get a taxi, but we called down to the guard in front of our building and he had one here in 5 minutes. There’s a 30 baht surcharge if you phone for a taxi, so the guards out front just walk down the street and grab one for you. Very easy. Songkran roads in Bangkok were empty so we were at the airport in 20 minutes. That’s another thing about Bangkok – with the new expressways, we can be at the airport in 30 minutes. Sydney and Amsterdam are the only other places I’ve been to where it’s so easy to get to the airport. It’s always around 150 baht to the airport, but I gave the driver 200 and said
“sawasdee bi mai” – Happy New Year. He smiled and we were on our way.
Terrorism in Southern Thailand has been spreading lately, it had been limited to 3 muslim provinces on the Malasian border, but the week before had reached out to a neighbouring Buddhist province - so there were soldiers at the airport waving a metal detector wand over people’s bags as we went in – never seen that before. Guess they thought that Songkran would be a good time for terrorists to target the airport.
Chose the right queue for check-in. That feels so good!
As we flew into Siem Reap, we realised that we were in the middle of nowhere. It is the dry season, so the rice fields were all brown and dry. Coconut trees, thatched huts and dirt roads were all we saw as we flew in, even though I had my neck twisted to the window to try to get an aerial shot of Angkor Wat.
From the airThe airport is new but tiny. Visa and customs were relatively quick, although the men on immigration duty were exactly the right age and personality type to have been ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers – probably were. I stood at the counter wondering how many people my immigration officer had tortured and killed as I smiled and tried to look like the photo in my 9 year old passport. My Cambodian visa was stamped into the last page of my passport – I’ve never filled up a passport before.
Coming from Bangkok, the 38 degree heat was not a shock to us when we stepped out of the airport. Our driver was waiting for us. $20 U.S. for a day for a driver and a car in Cambodia! Apparently the average monthly wage for a civil servant is $20, so although it seemed cheap to us, it is good money there.
Our hotel was lovely. A brand-new boutique hotel with only 64 rooms and a nice swimming pool in a central courtyard. Usually $75 dollars a night, we got it for $45 at the “embassy rate”. Dumped our bags, changed into shorts, and off we went to explore Angkor.
The tickets for the Angkor Wat complex are controlled by a Korean Company (?!). We gave our driver $60 each for a 7 day pass along with a passport photo each, and he came back with two nicely laminated passes. Our passes were religiously but politely checked every time we went into a temple over the next 5 days.
First, we went to Angkor Wat itself. Wow. It is huge. We knew it was going to be big, but it is HUGE. The outer wall is over a kilometre long. It is amazing. Built around 900 years ago by some king whose name I never did remember, it is a Hindu/Buddhist temple which is incredible now, but must have been mindblowing when it was constructed. Beautiful stone blackened by the years, sculpted and shaped into an incredibly complex structure. Everywhere there was a bare bit of wall, intricate carvings had been done. Decorative motifs around the doors and lintels, hundred metre carvings of Hindu epics and great battles of the time, and everywhere, the placid and yet extremely sexy carvings of the Apsaras – dancing goddesses who according to the guidebook were given as rewards to kings and heroes. Even the wife noted that the Apsaras have really lovely breasts.
Apsaras - like Shibuya parapara gyaruThen it rained. It never rains during Songkran, but we had a brilliant thunderstorm when we were right in the heart of Angkor Wat. Fortunately, we had already climbed down the steep, steep stairs from the topmost section – because neither of us wanted to be on those stairs in the rain. One of the wonderful things about the whole Angkor complex is the fact that they haven’t sanitised it yet. The stairs are steep and broken – there are no handrails to make them safe and modern, you climb up them as the Khmers must have climbed up them 900 years ago. There are almost no signs saying “do not enter”, and if there are, it is because a part of the building is really about to fall down, and you probably wouldn’t go in even if there were no signs. You can climb and walk and clamber almost anywhere you want to. It is like a giant playground for grown-ups.
Angkor Wat in the rain was even more beautiful than Angkor Wat in the dry. The stone turned a glistening silver, the jungle surrounding the temple steamed. We felt like a great adventure had begun, and the “Indiana Jones” themesong started playing in our heads.
We were both tired after our temple clambering, but it was only 4:30, and the temples close at 6:00, so we decided to go to Ta Prohm, the temple that the French decided to leave “as is” so that later people could know the thrill of seeing a temple swallowed by the jungle. The rain had scared off most of the tourists, and so we had the wonderful Ta Prohm to ourselves. Have you seen Tomb Raider? The scene where Lara walks through the temple with the butterflies was filmed in Ta Prohm. From the mysterious gates in the outer wall with their enigmatic faces staring in the four cardinal directions, you walk down a path through thick jungle to the temple proper, where twisted roots of giant trees grab deep into the stone of the temple like giant fists squeezing and squashing an orange. The temple is a maze of fallen stone, tiny courtyards, twisting corridors. We walked around it for an hour without having any idea of where we were or where we started from. We clambered up on top of piles of stone quarried almost a thousand years ago and shaped into a beautiful temple, which now had been knocked down by the ages into our personal playground. Again, nobody told us not to and we were free to climb and explore as we wished. We both realised that we had made it to Angkor ‘in time’. A friend working on the conservation of Angkor and based in the Japanese Embassy in Phom Penh had said to us “see it within the next six months, development is going so fast that it will lose its ‘specialness’ after that”. I think six months is pessimistic, I think it probably had about two more years – although I am sure it has already lost a lot of the wild charm it must have had ten years ago when there were an average of only 40 visitors a day to the whole 100 square kilometre Angkor site and most of it was still full of landmines.
Ta ProhmThoroughly happy and exhausted after our first afternoon, we drove into the old market area of Siem Reap and wandered through the markets, had dinner then home to bed. Normally, the town attached to a famous site like Angkor Wat becomes touristy and tacky, but Siem Reap has charm. The markets are not much to speak of – most of the stuff there we can buy in the weekend markets in Bangkok. But the old town area is all French colonial buildings remodelled into beautiful cafes and restaurants. Delicious Angkor Beer is $1, and a dinner for two is less than $10. Cambodian food is nothing to write about though, especially coming from Thailand.
The Old Market area Siem ReapWe were asleep by 8:30 – our legs shaking from the climbing and walking we had done.
Next morning the alarm got us up at 5 am. This was our pattern all week. Up at 5, out the door at 5:30. The temples open from 6:00, but most people don’t get there until 7 or 8 which is crazy, but nice, as the temples are magical and empty before the sun comes up. The mist from the jungle and the soft light gives a romantic and mysterious atmosphere.
Second day we went to watch the sun rise from the temple at the top of a hill between Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. The climb up the hill was hard, especially at 6 am. Later in the day they have elephants you can rent if you don’t feel like walking, but they were stilla sleep with the tourists, I guess. The sunrise from the top was nothing to speak of. Then down the hill to the Bayon temple in the middle of the Angkor Thom Complex. Angkor Thom is the heart of the whole Angkor area, just as Angkor Wat is the symbol. The Bayon lies at the centre of an area marked out by walls stretching 3 kilometers to a side. 90 percent of the area within the walls is thick topical jungle, apparently full of cobras and clear of landmines, but it was the latter that scared us more than the former.
If you’ve seen a photo of Angkor, you’ve probably seen the faces on the Bayon. The word ‘enigmatic’ could have been invented to describe them. Peaceful, beautiful and HUGE, they stare off in all four directions from the 51 towers of Bayon (I think there are 51, or maybe there used to be, but now there are only 36 – whatever). There is argument as to whether the faces are god, or whether they are an image of the king, or whether they are both. Whatever – they are incredible. Everywhere you look around you, the same face stares off into the distance and the jungle beyond. Like all the temples of Angkor, Bayon is designed to represent Mount Meru, the ancient home of the gods, but it is at Bayon where you feel this most strongly. A mountain of grey stone stained with grey-green lichen, decorated with faces and carvings and the ever-present firm-breasted Apsaras. Again, there are levels, and corridors twisting like a maze. We walked around until the tour buses started to arrive. The tour buses at Angkor are mini-scale, largely because the only entrance across the moat and through the surrounding wall are the entrances built 900- years ago, and they were designed just wide enough for an elephant to pass through. This is another thing that lends an innocent charm to the atmosphere.
We sat and were overcharged for soft-drinks, pineapple and bananas at one of the many small stalls that sit a respectful distance back from the temple ($2 when it clearly should have been $1.50), then went back into the temple again once the sun hit the giant faces for more photographs. Angkor is a photographer’s dream – so much to take, and a photographer’s nightmare – so big. Then back to the hotel for breakfast, a swim and a sleep.
We went out again in the early afternoon. First down to the old market area which was to become our favourite ‘hang-out’ for lunch, then off to see more temples in the afternoon. We went to several temples (Preah Rup and Ta Som) which anywhere else in the world would be landmarks and tourist attractions in their own right, but when compared to Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm and Bayon were fairly “yeah, it’s a temple, whatever”. So we went back to Angkor Thom and walked down a track through the jungle to the East gate, the ‘Gate of the Dead’.
Gate of the Dead - Bayon
Nobody goes there because you have to walk a kilometre and a half – but it is great. The gate is wrapped in the jungle, with the ever present faces of the king/god staring off into the distance. We would have done some exploring in the jungle but for terror of landmines. Then back to Angkor Wat again for a sunset which never happened. For some reason the Khmer New Year is one day later than the Thai one, so there were thousands of Happy Khmers at the temple. While we didn’t have the atmosphere of having it empty, there was something nice about seeing thousands of locals picnicking and frolicking in their national treasure.
Next day, we set off on a long drive north for which we had to pay our driver an additional $20 for petrol to see Bantey Srei - the “Pink Temple” and Kbal Spean - the “River of a Thousand Lingams”. The Pink Temple has the best carvings of any of the temples (some of which were famously stolen by and subsequently recovered from a French man who later went on to become the French Minister of Culture!). The central section is closed and roped off! Boo. As we were the first and only people there, the guard let us sneak in to have a quick look, but then stood near us saying “please hurry” until we gave up and left. The river of a thousand lingams is at the top of a hill an hour walk from the carpark below, but there was no water to flow over the Shiva lingams and carvings on the river bed, so it was more like the ‘dry riverbed of a thousand lingams’ and not impressive at all.
In the afternoon, after another nap and swim at the hotel, we went to Banteay Kdey temple – which was nice in a ruined roman sort of way, then back to our favourite, Ta Prohm for another walk around. It felt like a completely different place without the rain, but we happily walked around for an hour, then sat at a stall just outside and had Angkor beer until the sun set and a guard politely threw us out.
Monks in Ta ProhmDay four we decided to stay near Angkor, having been disappointed by our long drive to see nothing the previous day. Sunrise (again, it didn’t rise – wrong time of the year for spectacular sunrises and sunsets) at Angkor Wat. Another walk through Angkor Thom – this time another kilometre and a half to the West gate. Then out to the West Baray – a huge irrigation pond built at the same time as the temples for rice growing. The Baray is a place where Khmers go, not really for foreign tourists, as there is nothing to see. The local custom is to rent a hammock under an umbrella on the shores of the Baray and drink, eat and play cards. We didn’t play cards, but otherwise we did as the locals do – really nice custom. Made me want to set up a ‘hammock bar’ back home.
Kids in the Western barayBack to the hotel in time for breakfast, again slept through the hot part of the day. Lunch in the old market at the Red Piano bar, great French-style café in a 100 y/o Colonial building complete with signed photos of Angelina Jolie from when she was there filming Tomb Raider.
After that, we went to Preah Khan which was nice, but again we were so spoiled by this stage that it was ‘another temple’. Then to Bayon again for more photos in the afternoon sun – they say you should go to Bayon in the morning, but the afternoon light really brings out the definition in the carved faces beautifully. We finished the day at Ta Prohm again – this had become our favourite place by now. We went inside to our favourite courtyard and climbed up a fallen doorway and sat and watched the few tourists there in the afternoon file past and take photos in front of the door used in Tomb Raider.
Our last day in Cambodia, we decided to go for a long drive out to Beng Melea temple, about 90 kilometers North-East of Siem Reap. We were worried that it would be a long drive for a repeat of two days previously where there was nothing much to see. No way. A drive on a new dirt road through countryside that must not have changed much in 900 years. No electricity. No toilets – they go in the rice fields, I guess. No real houses to speak of - mostly just thatched huts in amongst the coconut palms. Lots of bicycles and ox carts.
Beng Melea is really a Tomb Raider experience. A HUGE temple almost completely swallowed by the jungle. This was the wildest place we’d been to by far. The demining effort had only been completed the year previously – for a space of two kilometres around the temple, we were told. We saw far too many one-legged farmers hopping around on crutches in the nearby villages.
We spent two hours climbing around Beng Melea. You have to climb over fallen walls and collapsed structures. It was wonderful. This is a place which will change a lot in the next few years. For now, you still have complete freedom – you can climb anything you want, through broken window ledges and half-collapsed doors into long dark corridors. There is not much to be seen in the way of carvings. We were told that the Khmer Rouge had stolen and carried off most of them two years ago, but it didn’t detract from the feeling – just as the first foreigners to see the temples must have felt when they were taken to them sleeping in the deep jungle hundreds of years ago.
Beng MeleaAnd that was it. Back to Siem Reap, one last beer in the old market before we were back to the airport. The couple checking in ahead of us had travelled halfway around the world to see Angkor and had 4 transfers on their way home. We were in bed in our own apartment by 10pm. I would have travelled halfway around the world to see Angkor, but I was glad I didn’t have to.
