We were not sure what to expect from Cambodia as the reports we've heard from other travellers cover the whole spectrum from 'wonderful' to 'bloody awful' so we were surprised at the modernity and money of Siem Reap. Of course it has a gazillion tourists because of the famous Angkor Wat but even so there were a lot of very big and swanky hotels many of which were built in the style of the old temples - almost like Vegas in Asia (without the casinos).
After checking into our (rather crummy but friendly) guest house, we took their free bikes to check out Angkor Wat as soon as possible. What we hadn't realised is that Angkor Wat is not just a Wat, it is an entire city complex covering a very large area (we're talking tens of square kilometres here). Sadly we chose the wrong road to get there so instead of a leisurely 8km ride we ended up cycling about 15km just to get there! We knew that after a certain time you can get in for free so we hung about and went to one of the hill-top pyramid-style temples which is a classic place to watch a sunset...pretty cool. We passed Angkor Wat itself on the way and admired it whilst sheltering under a huge tree while we waited for the tropical deluge to stop. It does rain a lot in England but here it rains just as much but instead of lasting 3 days, the rain drops its entire load in about 15 minutes!
We were knackered after our bike ride but decided to take the "short circuit" around the complex the next day (only 17km) but cheated slightly by getting a tuk tuk the 8km up the road and back! Enough, I hear you say: what about the Wat???
Cheating on Strange Tuk Tuk - the locals all found this the height of comedy
The whole area dates from around 800 AD onwards and was a succession of cities in different locations according to the King's whims, with temples and palaces surrounded by vast swathes of residential areas. People were not deemed worthy to live in stone buildings so none of the towns survive bar these enormous temples rising from the forest. I couldn't do it justice to describe each place, but the general theme is either pyramid-style "mountain temples" with huge towers with massive faces on each face (north, south, east & west), and temples in a long corridor-style format, also with faces, but with many intricate carvings with a Hindu and then, later, Buddhist focus.
A gateway into one of the cities, complete with face towers...very cool
Most of the buildings have been cleared since they were "discovered" (about 100 years ago) but one or two have been left "as they were found" with many trees making their home in the cracks and crevices of the walls and growing mahoosively, leaving the temple walls intertwined with these amazing trees and making you feel like Indiana Jones is going to run around the corner followed by Pygmies with poison darts any second!! (In fact, both Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider were filmed at this place.) The place has a wonderful air of mystery and not surprisingly we took about a gazillion photos which I urge you to look at on flickr in the coming weeks, when we get around to uploading them.
Angkor Wat itself is a mighty huge temple complex with temple mountain in the complex. It is surrounded by the walls of the city, in turn surrounded by a massive and rather beautiful moat that spun tendrils of mist over its waters at dusk. We left this until the end of the day and wandered around it during sunset - in fact a much more lovely spot to see the sun go down.
As we were walking, (and cycling and by the third day we had ditched the bikes and hired a tuk tuk!), around the whole area I was so struck and inspired to write the blog and now it comes to it I can't think of what to say about it, other than that it really is a wonder of the world, in a similar league to Egypt's pyramids, and was well worth the visit.
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