Day 1 We had arrived in Siem Reap after a day of travelling from Bangkok by train, which meant we had to deal with the pretty chaotic land border crossing and a long journey by taxi and tuk tuk to Siem Reap. So it was a lie in and a walk into town for breakfast. We were staying at the Siem Reap Temple Villas which is just a short walk into the main part of town. It was a bit of a gear change to Myanmar where we had just come from with tuk tuk drivers shouting at you from every angle, shop owners trying to drag you into their shops and people begging everywhere.
Just one of the many tuk tuks in town There are lots of places to eat in town, we chose a place which had a menu as big as an encyclopaedia and ate for about $2.50 USD. We jumped in a Tuk Tuk to take us across town to a mobile phone shop called ‘Smart’ where we sorted out a local Sim for just $5 USD for our phone with the most helpful man. I highly recommend getting a local sim for each country when you are there so you can make calls or use the internet if you need to. In the evening we discovered ‘Pub Street’ a heaving street of pumping music and people everywhere drinking as many of the 50cent beers as they can...not our kind of place at all but with cocktails buy 1 get 1 free we figured if you can’t beat them join them. There are all kinds of food on offer here from Italian to Mexican so it’s a good chance to have something you’ve been craving if you’ve been travelling for a while! Although to pre warn...we sampled some Mexican which was small portions, disappointing and overpriced at $7 USD each. Day 2 Excited to see what all the fuss was about we couldn’t hold off any longer and decided that we would head to Angkor for our first temple day. After breakfast we headed into town for the daunting task of finding a tuk tuk to take us out for the day. We had decided that today we would head to one of the furthest away temples Banteay Srei (Lady Temple) and the Land Mine Museum, we negotiated with a tuk tuk driver (although I think we could have negotiated harder) and agreed on $20 USD for the day. It was a bumpy old ride and took about 45 minutes to get to the Lady Temple as it’s about 32km away from Siem Reap. On the way in we purchased our 3 day temple passes for $40 USD each, it’s all quite high tech and they come with your photo printed on them. This pass gets you into pretty much the whole area and you can explore all the temples freely without paying extra, you can choose a 1 day, 3 day or 7 days pass which all cost different amount.
Just one of the intricate and amazing buildings at Banteay Srei We loved this temple which dates back to the tenth century and felt it was well worth travelling out to, the carvings were so intricate and it wasn’t too busy either. You can pretty much explore anywhere you like which is slightly worrying for the preservation of it but it was very interesting. It's well worth spending a few hours here.
So much attention to detail and just amazing to look at close up at Banteary Srei
Exploring the beautiful Lady Temple While exploring Angkor you will become very accustomed to the monkeys that wander quite freely here, ignore them and do not feed them. We watched a woman teasing a huge monkey with a sweet and it’s a miracle she didn’t have her hand bitten off! The Landmine Museum was a huge eye opener and I recommend everyone comes here to get a better understanding of the real problems the Cambodians have to face with these horrible explosives. Join one of the short tours that take you around and explain everything to you, it’s really interesting and well worth a visit.
Eye opening stuff at the Landmine Museum, Angkor Next stop was Pre Rup which was very grand and we climbed all the way to the top, we were visiting in December and it was already really hot! Our driver took us for lunch at a tourist place, after seeing that they wanted $7 USD for some fried noodles we left and bought some bananas and crisps from the shop next door instead. For sunset we headed to Phnom Bakheng where you have to climb a huge hill to get to the top. It was crazy, there were so many people and there were elephants which were taking people up (not something I agree with) in the guide books it says a maximum of 300 people are allowed up here at any one time which is a total lie! The view from the top is quite spectacular though and you can see Angkor Wat and a number of the other temples in the distance too. By the time sunset approached there must have been over a 1,000 tourists crammed up there and it totally ruined the atmosphere, but the sunset was beautiful and I would say still worth doing. The journey back in the dark to town was a very cold one and I recommend bringing a jumper, I was shivering by the time we arrived back!
The beautiful sunset was worth the steep climb Day 3 The alarm went off at 4.15am which is far too early for my liking but we had booked our tuk tuk driver from yesterday to come and collect us so we could watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. We headed outside, but there was no sign of our tuk tuk driver, we walked to the main road and still no sign. Not quite sure what to do and worried we were going to miss the sunrise after 10 minutes of waiting another guy drove past and offered to take us for the same price we had agreed. We decided to watch the sunrise sitting on the bank of the moat that surrounds Angkor Wat, bring a torch with you as it’s very dark and hard to see where you are going. It was already pretty busy when we arrived but we found a spot.
A mesmerising sunrise over Angkor Wat Preah Khan The sunrise was incredible and took just over an hour from when we arrived. We decided to explore Angkor Wat another time as that was where the hoards of tourists were going so we headed for Preah Khan instead which was a really cool temple, dating back to the twelfth century, it is huge and quite a lot of it is falling down but that almost added to the atmosphere. It wasn’t to busy when we were there either so that was a bonus, one of our favourite ones I think! At a few of the temples you can get the tuk tuk drive to meet you at the other side so you don’t have to walk all the way back through, making the most of your day.
Dawn breaking over the waters surrounding Preah Khan, this was a beautiful time of day to visit Next was Preah Neak Pean which is a small temple surrounded by five pools, then onto Ta Som where you will see some of those iconic walls that have been overrun with trees, where the jungle is starting to take back it’s land. There are many sellers all around the temples which can get a bit frustrating but some are just happy to have a chat with you, you will find out some very interesting things if you do.
It is crazy to see the trees taking over the buildings here like this one at Ta Som
Next onto Eastern Mebon this tenth century temple used to be surrounded by a reservoir, the temple consists of five tower and every corner had huge lion statues which are all still in great condition. Srah Srang, which was the bathing pool was nothing special but across the road is Banteay Kdei which was pretty cool, the entrance arch has four faces which I loved and there is a nice walk down the the temple itself. Finally we headed to Ta Prohm which is the ‘Tomb Raider’ temple with the big tree, it has been largely untouched by archaeologists so I imagine this is what it must have looked like when these temples were first discovered. There were so many tourists here though it really ruined the atmosphere so we did a quick walk around, got some pics and left them to all their selfies.
Ta Prohm or the 'Tomb Raider' Temple, was by far the busiest one of all
Day 4 It's quite important to have a day off from Temples otherwise you are so templed out you just won’t enjoy it. Today was that day for us, we made the most of it and did some travel admin, booked our bus to the next place in a couple of days, did some shopping and got a $4 USD foot massage. One thing I was loving about Cambodia at this point were all the smells you get walking around, the cooking smells, incense, flowers all just really incredible! Day 5 Our last temple day had arrived. Today we decided to hire mountain bikes and take ourselves around Angkor, we found a place that rented decent mountain bikes just over the bridge by the roundabout for $5 USD each with helmets. It wasn’t too hard going and we got to Angkor Wat in about 20 minutes. We headed into Angkor Wat and were immediately approached by someone to give us a tour, this was the only temple we had wanted to learn so much detail about so we negotiated him down to $10 USD (which I still think was too much but he was a nice guy) we were really pleased we did it as we learnt so much, he spent about an hour with us telling us all about this amazing twelfth century temple and it was very interesting.
The iconic Angkor Wat After a few hours exploring Angkor Wat we headed to Bayon, stopping at a few smaller temples on the way, Bayon was amazing, definitely one of my favourites, this twelfth century temple has faces carved everywhere, there are three different levels and lots of ways you can go, it's a bit of a maze but I really liked that sense of adventure.
Bayon was a temple of faces, there are around 216 faces at this one temple There are lots of little noodle places around that you can stop and refuel at, you really do not need to go to one of the tourist restaurants at all. After a lunch stop we headed for the Royal Residences, Terrace of the Leper King and Elephants and some other smaller temples and then cycled back to town. Overall we loved Angkor such a cool place and somewhere I would probably love to come and explore again. NEXT STEPS - Book accommodation or look at options in Siem Reap here
- Purchase the Lonely Planet for Cambodia here Read previous post - Inle Lake, Myanmar
