Angkor What?

Buddha
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To get into Cambodia we took a bus from Bangkok, got a visa and walked across a small bridge that serves as the border crossing.We then took a taxi the final 100kms from the border to the town of Siem Reap with two German girls we met on the bus.The exact site of the border has changed many times in history and it's easy to see why; there is no obvious geographic boundary, and in fact the whole region is an enourmous plain of standing water, small villages and lush green paddy fields. An attacking army from either side would have little trouble except in monsoon season when they would be stopped by the mud.

Angkor Wat
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Positioned on the north-eastern corner of Cambodia's centre-piece, the giant Tonlé Sap Lake, Siem Reap is a non-descript inland town which has, on it's outskirts, the magnificent temples of Angkor Wat. The temples were officially rediscovered by French explorers though earlier Chinese and Japanese pilgrims had described them and even drawn them in their diaries. The French though, brought them to the attention of the world in the 1860's. The monuments were left to the jungle for many centuries and being made of sandstone they slowly dissolved in the damp, humid conditions. In the 1960's efforts were made to restore and reconstruct some of the temples by rebuilding them with the same stone and carving techniques thought to have been used during their original construction. Then of course war and politics intervened as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge blocked access to the temples and even destroyed some of them under the guise of creating a communist eutopia. By wiping out Khmer cultural relics, Cambodia could start from scratch and build a new peasant state, so the leadership thought. The next few decades had tragic consequences for the people of Cambodia and the temples faced periodic destruction and neglect and by the 1990's some had fallen back into the hands of the jungle. 1992 saw Angkor Wat declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and since then efforts to restore and protect the temples have redoubled.

What?
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We decided to hire bicycles to see the temples as the 'long loop' around the perimeter of the complex is about 26kms and we thought that on a tuk-tuk we would be speeding around a little too much. It turned out to be a good decision as we had enough speed to get us through the tour but we weren't beholden to a driver and could avoid the crowded temples if need be. We dawdled in the interesting areas and sped through the boring bits.

The most enjoyable times were when you were wandering through one of the temples and you suddenly got a sense of what it might have been like to have been alive when the city of Angkor Wat was home to Kings and was one of Asias seats of power. Your imagination takes over can almost hear the sound of thousands of people, see the elephants parading in front of you and be part of the spledour of dynasty.

Transport
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We spent a nice two days in Siem Reap but we also felt a sense of anticipation as we stepped on to the boat headed, across the lake and towards Battambang.