Sambor Prei Kuk

Slightly later start today, Mr Smarty turned up at 8am! Also a shorter drive to this one, about 3 hours south-east of Siem Reap. This site is our fourth ancient Hindu temple in a row, and thankfully the last for a little while too. Its distinguishing features are that it's pre-Angkor, and the ruins actually date from around the 6th century which is quite cool.

Three main groups of ruins here: some in good conditions, others were just piles of stones. But all quite interesting, with a few distinguishing features. Some even had really good carvings that were preserved, and some had inscriptions too with edicts from kings etc. I liked that since the inscriptions were done using Hindu calendars, archaeologists can actually date them precisely; eg 13th September 672 AD. Not bad!

This was another of those sites that had been essentially lost to the jungle after the fall of the Khmer Empire, and only rediscovered in the 20th century. You could really feel it too, as many sections were densely forested and it would've been hard to notice overgrown temples unless you were really close to them! But as is often the case in Cambodia, many of the temples had been destroyed by B52 bombing runs during the Vietnam war, and others during the civil war with the Khmer Rouge. So it's an interesting history, but a sad one too.

Another late lunch at a local restaurant, though this one seemed newly built to take advantage of the UNESCO listing (which had only happened in 2017). Watched in amusement as a large table of Americans nearby (one of the only foreign groups we saw, though there weren't many local tourists either) all bowed their heads in prayer and said grace, thanking Jeesus for His Bounty, while the local women who'd cooked the food were standing right there. I also enjoyed that the enthusiastic teenage girl who jumped at the chance to give the prayer spent the entire recitation scanning the table for anyone opening eyes or lifting heads. Weird.

Back to the car where we mostly dozed the three hours back to Siem Reap, arriving back around 5:30pm. A bit earlier than yesterday, but still another long day of travelling. It's frustrating as well when you have stuff to organise and just don't have internet - neither of us have bought SIM cards in Laos or Cambodia as we aren't staying long enough. Dinner was next door to our hotel, where a German couple running a guesthouse were making tasty pita bread grilled sandwiches.

Thailand tomorrow!Read more