Cambodia

Bantaey Srei - The Womens temple
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Lynne and I needed to extend our visas one last time in Thailand. This time instead of just doing a "border run" and having lunch in Cambodia we decided to make a three day trip of it and see the temples at Angkor Wat that we had heard so much about.

We left Bangkok airport midday on Wednesday, flying Bangkok Airlines direct to Siem Reap, Cambodia. The tickets were pretty cheap and they gave us a nice snack on the plane. We will definitely use them again. The flight was short and sweet and when we arrived at the new Siem Reap Airport (7 months old) we stood in line for a Cambodian visa. This was interesting – it costs $20 to get into Cambodia (plus $2 if you don’t have a picture) or 1000 baht. 1000 baht is actually $30! The ATM machines in Cambodia only dispense US$ not Riel, which is the country’s currency, so we quickly pulled out cash to pay in dollars rather than Thai baht. Quick save of $10 each and well worth it.

Angkor Wat
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We had booked into the Angkor Star Hotel using Hotelclub.com (brilliant service) and the hotel staff met us at the airport. We had decided to travel really light for this short trip (note from Lynne: John really decided this) and only had our backpacks and no checked luggage. Heaven!

The hotel turned out to be quite good. We had a really good size room with A/C and a mini-bar and a decent sized bathroom. They advertised $80 a night in the hotel lobby but we had got the room for $30 a night through Hotelclub.com - Great Deal!

Angkor Thom at First Light
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We had had rather a late night on Tuesday (that's another Thailand story!) so when we first arrived, we hung out at the salt water pool in the afternoon after a quick walk downtown to find an ATM, a bottle of wine and of course some chocolate for Lynne.

That evening we had dinner at a restaurant directly opposite the hotel. It had a buffet style dinner and a show of Cambodian dancing (Note from Lynne: John says that he couldn’t tell the difference between Thai style and Cambodian style dancing – Men!). The food was very good and the dancers really seemed to be enjoying themselves without the bored look we have seen in so many other shows.

Ta Phrom - Invasion of the Gum trees
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We had arranged for a car and driver for Thursday and he was there promptly at 8am. We drove out to visit Angkor Wat which was about 15 minutes away.

We bought a $40 three day pass which entitled us to visit all the surrounding temples. I have to say, I was very impressed with the ticketing process. They took our picture with a web cam, imprinted it on a 2" x 3" card with the valid dates and then laminated the whole thing in about 2 minutes. All this at a drive up booth as we arrived.

Cambodia dancers (or are they really Thai dancers in disguise?)
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Lynne had wanted to try to arrange a flight over Angkor Wat in either a light plane or helicopter. We knew it was a large complex from the tour books we had read and many of them said it was difficult to appreciate the size as you walked around. I have to say I was a little skeptical of our being able to arrange this, but things just fell into place as they usually do for us, and as we were getting our tickets we saw a sign advertising balloon rides over Angkor Wat.

It was just five minutes away and so we headed over. It turned out to be a tethered balloon with a large viewing gondola big enough to hold around 20 people. We waited for one tour group to go through and had the whole thing to ourselves! I am not sure it gave us the perspective we were looking for but we thoroughly enjoyed it and got some good pictures.

Monkeys run wild at Angkor Wat
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We then drove over to explore Angkor Wat on foot.

Angkor Wat was built in the 12th Century and has five main towers which dominate the skyline. We entered across a causeway and began to appreciate just how big the complex is.

The Bas Reliefs carved into the walls are incredibly detailed and stretch for hundreds of meters in a square around the main courtyard where the five towers are. They are also quite warlike for a Buddhist temple showing two battle scenes and the army of an ancient king.

Up, up and away in our beautiful balloon over Angkor Wat
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The stairs up to the towers are also incredibly steep, it's almost like climbing a ladder and it's a little disconcerting when you come down as it looks even steeper than going up!

We spent three hours walking around this incredible place and I cannot do justice to it by trying to describe what we saw. Hopefully the pictures will help. It's truly a remarkable monument.

On Thursday morning we had one of those "We're only here once so we have to do it" moments. So we decided to get up at 5am to see the sunrise at Angkor Thom.

John sitting in the library window at Angkor Wat
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It was amazing. Actually, it was quite cloudy so we really didn't see the sunrise, however, we were the only people there! It was like stepping back in time a 1000 years to wander around this temple in the early morning light on our own, peeking through dark doorways and seeing buddhas dressed in orange robes we could imagine how it used to be. Only the birds were chattering, no other (visible) living soul.

(Note from Lynne: In the Eternal Darkness video game, Angkor Thom is the resting place of Mantorok, the god of Chaos, guardian of the Ancients. In the series, the Khmer people worshiped him as a fertility god until Pious bound him with magic. In Tomb Raider the main characters go to Angkor Thom during their trip to Cambodia to recover the first piece of the Triangle of Light.)

Monks at rest on the wall of the moat around Angkor Wat. We loved the contrast of the orange robes in this shot.
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We spent an hour looking around and marvelling at the size of the faces and then headed back to the hotel for some breakfast.

After breakfast we headed to Banteay Srei known as the citadel of the women (and the only major temple at Angkor not built for the king). This was a drive of about 30 minutes which gave us a brief chance to see the Cambodian countryside.

This small temple is built entirely of pink sandstone which has a lovely warm color, however this is not the reason it's known as the citadel of the women. It’s because this temple has many fine intricate carvings of women.

For me this temple reminded me of a video game, sorry, but it did. For those of you familiar with Diablo or some of the other games, you will know what I mean about long stone corridors with dead ends and short little corridors which open out into courtyards.

On the way back we stopped at Ta Prohm made famous by its inclusion in the movie Tomb Raider. Although the film took visual liberties with other Angkor temples, its scenes of Ta Prohm were quite faithful to the temple's actual appearance, and made use of its eerie qualities.

This is amazing, in that it has not been restored. The Gum trees have partially destroyed the temple with their roots and yet they now hold it together.

We passed many other temples as we drove around. They seemed to be around every corner and we did not have anywhere near the time to see them all. There are in fact 35 monuments dating from the 9th to the 13th century in Angkor, which was once the capital of Cambodia.

I think we did see a good cross section of them, once again we are finding that the more we see the more there is to see...

….John

P.S.  from Lynne.

I know some of you are interested in the historical stuff about temples and so on, so below is some of that: