Angkor What?

Days 76 - 80 (14/06/08 - 18/06/08): Siem Reap, Cambodia

I spent five days in Siem Reap, exploring the old history and culture of the Khymer people. On the first day, Andy and I decided to go out to the temple of Beng Melea. This temple is reasonably unknown to most people, as it is not in the main temple circuit that people do, as it is 70km out of town. I was quite keen to visit it, as I had met somebody in Singapore who told me it was definitely worth seeing, and so I made a note of it in my notebook. We asked a few tukt-tuk drivers (the normal way of seeing temples), however it would cost $45 for the 5 hour round journey (2.5hrs each way!). This seemed like a sub-optimal solution, and so on Andy's smart idea, we walked around town until we found the fanciest hotel we could, the Siem Reap Riviera. It was low season, and as such almost completely empty. We spoke to a uniformed bellboy, who made a few inquiries for us. Very shortly he had organised a car for us for the day for $45, that would take us to Beng Melea in just over an hour in air conditioned comfort! Brilliant!

The temple of Beng Melea was very impressive. It is pretty much a ruin, with large parts of it collapsed and big piles of rubble all over the place. The jungle has been overtaking the temple, and the whole complex is covered in trees and plant life. Over the last few decades there had been an effort to try and reclaim the temple from the jungle. However, it still had a very undiscovered feel to it, as we clambered over the rubble, through the old passageways and over the walls, led by guide who pointed out the interesting parts to us. It really was impressive, and you felt like you had just discovered this massive ruin in the middle of the jungle. (It helped that there were no other tourists around as well). Luckily, just as we finished walking around, the heavens opened up, and we got absolutely soaked to the bone on the 5 minute walk back to the car. It was actually very refreshing, the rain here is nice and warm and is better than the sweat you are normally soaked with. Our driver took us to the war museum on the way back, it wasn't much more than an empty field with a few old Russian tanks and artillery pieces in it, but still quite interesting to see.

I had met Tony in our guesthouse, a guy from Manchester who I first met in Huay Xai, and kept running into throughout Laos. So with him and a few other people from the guesthouse we went down to 'Bar Street' to one of the numerous bars there. What started as a few quiet drinks quickly escalated (due to the cheap price of booze in Cambodia), especially when it turned midnight and officially became my birthday. We eventually left the bar when it shut and they kicked us out, where we retired to our guesthouse to play pool and have a nightcap, or two.

Unfortunately all this means that I wasn't really in the mood to go to the main temple complex of Angkor Wat the next day. After waking up and eating, it was already late in the morning, and I didn't really feel like doing anything. Luckily, it then started raining, so I could use that to clear my conscience and spent a quiet day watching movies and reading my book. Everyone else was feeling the same way, and so we had a quiet night playing pool and watching movies.

Which means that the next day, I was rearing to go! I woke up at the ridiculous time of 5:30am, and 15 minutes later I was on a crappy rent-a-bike, cycling out to the temples. Most people choose to explore the temples by tuk-tuk, hiring the driver for the day. However I decided that doing it on a bike by myself would be good fun. I had a few issues with directions (I took a back road out to the complex, meaning I had missed the ticket booth, so had to cycle back into town, get a ticket, and then back out to the complex). But by 7am I was at my first temple! The Angkor Wat complex houses a large number of temples, spread out across a large area. The temples were built over quite a large time-frame, and so they are all quite different stylistically and architecturally. I visited too many temples to describe them all here, but for my own future reference more than anything else, the official list for the first day is: Bayon, Baphuon, Angkor Thom, Terrace of the Elephants, Terrace of the Leper King, Preah Palilay, Preah Kahn, Neak Pean, Ta Som, Eastern Mebon, Pre Rup, Bantai Kdei, Ta Prohm and Ta Keo.

Each one of them had their own style and architecture, and while some people can only look at a few temples before getting bored, I found them all absolutely amazing and interesting. The temple of Bayon has hundreds of large carved faces in the towers and walls. Preah Kahn is a vast old university, full of corridors and colonnades. Neak Pean is a very picturesque collection of pools and sculptures. Ta Prohm is overgrown with giant trees. East Mebon and Pre Rup are huge pyramid temples that reminded me of the ones in Ayutthaya. By this stage I had been cycling for almost ten hours. The park was still open for another couple of hours, and I was hoping to fit in the temple of Angkor Wat, the largest and namesake temple of the complex. However, within the space of a few minutes, the wind changed, and the sky turned black. The inevitable rainy season storm came down, and I knew it wasn't going to finish any time soon. So I packed everything away, jumped on my bike, and had a great 40min ride back to town in the thundering tropical rainstorm, getting strange looks from locals and tourists alike. It was a great experience!

I managed to meet up with Garth that night, who had just arrived in Siem Reap as well. We were back at 'our bar' in town, and Garth made up for missing my birthday by buying me lots of drinks. So once again there was another great night in a bar in Siem Reap, Cambodia. This of course meant that once again the next day I didn't really feel like doing anything. However, I had a three day ticket for the temples, and still hadn't seen Angkor Wat. So I got back on a bicycle, and rode out to the temple complex under the midday sun. Words cannot describe just how large and impressive Angkor Wat is, the temple is vast! It takes almost ten minutes just to walk from its entrance, over the moat, through the 'gate', across the giant courtyard, to the temple itself. Then the temple is huge as well, the giant stone towers reach up into the sky and I spent a lot of time walking around with my head craned skywards. While it is the largest and most impressive, I still preferred the individual aspects of the smaller temples, which to me had more impressive carvings, interesting details and features. But you still have to respect the a culture that built such an impressive building such a long time ago! I only spent an hour or so walking around Angkor Wat itself, the combination of exercise, a bad hangover and the unbearable heat soon beat me into submission, and so cycled back into town for another relaxed afternoon of DVD watching and hanging out with the other guesthouse people.

The guesthouse owners had just opened a large extension to their guesthouse across the road, and so they were having a big party to celebrate, which we were all invited to. There were about 10 backpackers, and a large group of Cambodians, many of whom we had gotten to know over the last few days. There was a bunch of free beer, and we were also served a free meal, which we all tucked into. By some random luck, a few other Kiwis had checked into the guesthouse, and so for the first time ever, the five of us kiwis outnumbered the usually dominant english! We all rubbed it in, especially as the All Blacks had just recently beaten the English! Once again we went back to our usual bar in town until they kicked us out, went back to our guesthouse, and sat on the top mezzanine level overlooking the city, and chatted the night away until the sun rose in the morning!

Which of course meant the next day was spent sleeping and watching DVDs, and packing up my stuff. I booked a boat ticket for early the next morning to the town of Battambang. I am not sure if there is much to do there, but I have heard the boat trip is very nice as it winds down the river, across the Tonle Sap, and through numerous floating villages. So in the end I spent five days in Siem Reap, alternating between partying and exploring ancient temples, and had a great time!