Scribbles Abroad

Good bye Vietnam, Hello Cambodia!

We really didn’t have much time left in South-East Asia but we had to stop in Cambodia to explore the temples of Angkor.  To save some time we caught a bus straight to Siem Reap and decided to save Phnom Phen for our next Cambodia visit.  It was a 6 hour ride from Saigon to the Vietnam-Cambodia boarder, then another 6 hours to Siem Reap.  The bus company arranged our visas and the boarder crossing, making the trip rather hassle free.

Our lunch at the boarder crossing:  Cambodia style pork noodle soup.  Yummy!!!

The temples of Angkor consist of over 50 structures spread over a 20 by 20 kilometer area, we had three days to cover as much ground as possible before we got completely burnt out.  Our plan of attack was to start with the smaller temples and work our way up to the head honchos.  Earlier in our travels we met an interesting girl from Taiwan who raved about exploring the Angkor Temples by bicycle.  We all thought the exercise would be nice and decided to give it a try.  The hotel across the street from our guest house rented “White Bicycles” where the proceeds go towards youth education and other community development projects, so we opted to rent these special bikes.

Day 1

We had a long bike ride ahead of us, it was about a 5K ride to the Angkor Ticket Office from our guesthouse, 30K to complete the loop and another 5K back to our hotel.  It was far.  We weren’t really sure what the roads would be like or if we’d even be able to complete the loop, but it really wasn’t bad at all.  The roads were flat and in great condition, except for one short section where they were repaving the roads.

From just a little bit of google-research we learned that most of the tour buses headed for Angkor Wat first thing in the morning followed by Angkor Tom and  continuing in a clockwise direction.  Wanting to avoid the tour groups as much as possible we decided to do the loop going the opposite direction.

After visiting a couple of temples we stopped to get a cup of coffee.  As with any other tourist destination we were bombarded by people trying to get us to buy souvenirs, but these were mostly children about 6-12 years old.  They were really good at selling things and had all sorts of tricks up their sleeves.  They’d play games with you, if you lost you buy.  There was a little boy who challenged Kahi to a fierce game of Tic-Tac-Toe and a girl who was brilliant at naming capitals of countries or states, you name a country and if she got the capital correct you buy.  The kids were everywhere and it did get a little annoying at time, but you need to have some compassion for them as they’re only doing what their parents have requested.

Prasat Kravan, our first temple.

Child labor at its finest

Kahi’s Tic-Tac-Toe challenge, he never lost, but he also never won.  The kid knew all the moves.

The temples weren’t very far from each other so we didn’t ride the our bikes very far before getting a little break to check out the next temple.

Banteay Kdei

Ta Som – The trees really show the age of the temples, they’re impressive and beautiful

Pre Rup

Liz molesting one of the lions guarding Pre Rup

Preah Neak Pean, we really liked this place.  It was one large pool with a temple in the middle surrounded by four smaller ones.  We relaxed in the mid day sun here and read our books.  We also found a giant centipede.

Preah Khan

Preah Khan

Preah Khan reliefs

We took up a new hobby of taking picture of people taking pictures.  These guys were hilarious!

We were quite successful at avoiding the crowds all day until it came to sunset.  The thing to do was to climb up a hill to Phnom Bakheng which over looked the city and supposedly had a view of Angkor Wat.  We should have known but we were surprised to see that everyone and their mom were at the top of this hill.  They were even offering elephant rides to the top of the hill.  It was quite ridiculous.  Since we were already there we figured we should see what all the hype was about.  At the top there were probably about 500 people there to see the sunset.  It was strange though, the sun wasn’t setting behind Angkor Wat but instead above the city.  Whoopty-do!  The view of Ankor Wat was blocked by trees unless you stood in a small area shared with many others.  It was  very beautiful but we knew there had to be other places where the sunset would be better, and you’d probably be alone considering everyone was at Phnom Bakheng.  After the sun set we made our way back to our guesthouse, the ride wasn’t bad at all and we decided we’d use them again the next day.

Everyone making their way up to Phnom Bakheng for the sunset

View of Angkor Wat from the top of Phnom Bakheng

Another great picture of people taking pictures, oh yeah and the sunset in the background

Day 2

Back on the bicycles for another ride around the temples.  Not as long as the big loop the small loop was about 27K round trip from our guesthouse, still pretty far though.  I highly recommend exploring the temples by bicycle if you have the time.  They really give you a chance to enjoy the scenery in between the temples, plus you get some good exercise.  Our first stop on the small circuit was Ta Phrom, the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed.  Kahi was particularly excited about this one.

The great thing about exploring the Angkor Temples is that they pretty much give you free range of the temples.  Meaning that you can climb all over they and explore all the rooms on your own, except for a few areas that are blocked off for safety purposes.  Remember these temples are OLD and kind of falling apart.  We started off with all of the other tourist and trust me there were a lot of them.  Then we squeezed though this little passage that lead to a large open courtyard with no one around.  We spent the majority of our time walking exploring this part of the temple, there was only one other girl in the area hang out reading her book.  It was great!  It felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.  Ta Phrom was definitely one of our favorite temples.

Ta Phrom, the common areas

Ta Phrom

Ta Phrom, in the back

All to ourselves 🙂

The trees really took over this one

Next we stop was Ta Keo, only 2K away.  The architecture of this temple was very different from all of the others.  It was much boxier and very steep.

On our way we found this little temple, I don’t think it was on the map.  Anyway I rode around it 6 times just for kicks.

Work smarter not harder!  Kahi hooked on to the back of a girls bike and had her tow him for a little.  She was up for the challenge.

Ta Keo – the steps are only 5 inches wide making it a little tricky to get to the top

We took a little reading break at the top of Ta Keo and hung out in the shade for a while

On our way to Ankor Thom we rode our bikes around Thommanon.  There was a long walk way that looked like a runway from a fashion show, Liz and I got up there and did a few turn on the catwalk.  Right when we were getting done with messing around a little old monk lady popped out of the temple.  She handed us two sticks of incense and motioned for us to follow her.  She lead us though the temple to a little figure of Buddah where we stuck the sticks in a bowl and then she pointed to a little box where we were suppose to leave an obligatory donation.  We didn’t have money on us and had to walk back to our bikes, she followed us the whole way.  It was a little funny.

Thommanon

Riding our bikes further down the road we came across the east gate of Angkor Thom.  There are five gates, one facing each pole and a victory gate, they’re all topped with four heads of the Buddah of Compassion and lined by a row of warrior guys pulling an eel/serpent/snake thing with many heads.  Once though the gates, it was lunch time and a row of restaurants wasn’t far.  As we got closer we were approached by a group of ladies, they all wanted us to eat at their restaurant.  The competition is fierce, it’s easy to bargain with them and get them to lower their prices then whats on their menus.  After lunch we were pretty tired and walked over to a shaded grassy area to take a nap.  We passed out for at least an hour.  It was getting late so we biked over to Angkor Wat to watch the sunset.  It was more dramatic than Phnom Bakheng and less crowded.  The next day would be our last day of temple touring, I think we had all seen enough temples to last us a while and were quite glad we were almost done.

Angkor Thom East Gate

Warriors at the gates of Angkor Thom

Kahi drinking rice wine with his new friends

We took a nice little nap after lunch in the grass under a tree near these temples

The front gate of Angkor Wat at sunset

Day 3

We saved sunrise at Angkor Wat for our last day and decided to hire a tuk-tuk for the day because none of us wanted to wake up extra early to bike all the way to the temple plus our butts were a little sore from riding on minimally padded bike seats for two days.  There was a misunderstanding and we though we had to be at Angkor Wat at 5:15am to see the sunrise, but instead be needed to leave our hotel at 5:15am and the sun didn’t rise until 6:00am, so we were there really really early.  It was super cold and we froze our butts off on the tuk-tuk ride over.  We were the first ones to enter Angkor Wat and Kahi found a good spot for us to watch the sunrise from.  Slowly more and more people started showing up, soon enough we were completely surrounded and Kahi had to monitor our to keep our spot.  Liz and I sat back and watched as everyone tried to get that perfect photo of the sunrise.  I realized that sometimes you’re trying so hard to take a good photo that you can’t enjoy the moment because you get so caught up with recording it.

Kahi and I freezing our butts off in the back of the tuk-tuk

Our tuk-tuk for the day

Angkor Wat at sunrise

The other 1000 people enjoying it with us

The inside of Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat reliefs depicting images of heaven (above) and hell (below)

Liz and Kahi had a intense tournament of Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) going on though our entire South-East Asia trip.  Here they are battling it out for the Cambodian cup.  In the end Kahi was crowned RPS master of South-East Asia but Liz put up some stiff competition and seemed to be a lot better after a few drinks.  Or maybe it was Kahi did worse.

Angkor Wat was beautiful but to tell you the truth it wasn’t my favorite temple.  Maybe I would have looked at it differently if we visited it first or at least on the second day.  By the third day we were all a little burnt out and a little tired of looking at temples.  When we first started out we climbed all over the temples exploring all the little rooms and taking time to look at all the little details.  Now we were simply walking though the temples admiring them but not in as much detail.

Next we headed to Angkor Thom to explore the last couple of temples on our list.

Terrace of the Leper King

Terrace of Elephants

Baphuon – is currently getting a facelift, can you see the giant Buddha?

The Bayon

The Bayon – this was our favorite temples, we even had our driver do one last loop around the temple before we left

Our driver was surprised when we asked him to take us back to our guesthouse, it wasn’t even noon but we were done looking at temples.  The Temples of Angkor were an unforgettable experience.  I really loved riding bicycles around the temples, it really slowed things down and gave you the time to enjoy them.  Two and a half days of temples was perfect, maybe just a little too much.  I think if I could do it all over again I would do Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom the second day and the short circuit the third day.  That way you’re still excited enough about the bigger guys, plus you really only need half a day for the small circuit.  Ta Phrom and The Bayon are amazing and you’ll be impressed no mater how many temples you’ve already seen.

Next we’re headed to Laos for some good old tubing down the river and trekking though some villages.  Its going to be cold up there!

Off to Laos!