Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

After a long journey of three flights to Cambodia I arrived in Siem Reap at about midday and was very tired, but excited to be with Rohit. Having met him in a market in Kolkata it was quite surreal to be on holiday with him. We stayed in a hostel with a swimming pool, because it is stupidly hot in Cambodia at the moment. And on our first day we took a walk around the city and chilled out in the pool.

Siem Reap is a very flat city with no high buildings and it is less busy that other Asian cities, so it was quite pleasant to be in. However it is incredibly touristy and has a street named 'pub street' which has 24 hour pubs selling beer at 50c., Which of course attracts party seekers and the gap year kids. But we didn't stay up late enough to get bothered by this! I was completely exhausted after the journey and a week of no sleep prior to it.

We woke at 4.15am the next day to go to Angkor Wat to see sunrise behind it. I was expecting it to be busier, but as the temple is huge there is a large area for us to spread out, so it was possible to get a view of sunrise without people in the way. It was fairly nice sunrise, but not the best. At 6am they opened the temple and we began temple touring....the first of many.

Angkor Way is the largest religious building in the world and dates back to 11th century. It took us 3 hours to walk around it, so that gives some idea of the scale of it. There are many many steps, taking us to high floors of the temple. It was suffered a lot of weather damage over the years, but internally the engravings on the stone are still preserved and tell stories of the history of the era. We didn't have a guide, but I have since bought a book so I can learn more about this.

The area around Angkor Wat was the centre of power in Cambodia from 6th century until 15th and every new king seemed to build at least one new temple. So the area is littered with ancient buildings. Some of the temples have been partly destroyed by trees that have grown within them, the roots wrapped around the structure. It is an impressive sight to see.

We visited about 7 temples and spent 13 hours on the tour. We had hired 'the cowboy' tuktuk driver for the day, he had a pimped up tuktuk that played music and had a coolbox with beers and water. He was a fascinating person to meet, having been an orphan living on the streets as a child he then became a monk at 19 to get an education, worked in the police and security and now loves his job as a tourist guide.

It was a long ,very interesting day. The temples are really beautiful and so impressively made. They have no cement holding the stones together and the stones are all different shapes and sizes, yet form perfect symmetrical walls. Many of the ceilings have collapsed and there are piles of the fallen stones that look like an earthquake has occurred. When a ceiling remains it is remarkable to see because the stones are balanced on top of each other and wedged in, with no fixative. It's amazing that they could ever be built, let alone remain standing for so long.

That evening we took a well deserved massage, having walked 19.7km- much of which was steps.Read more