Angkor What?

Disclaimer - as I write this, I am still recovering from the ongoing effects of heat stroke, so if this makes no sense, or, I am not my usual self - you'll understand. More on heat stroke in a later post.

So, our day started after a bit of lie in to recover from the partying we did the night before and by partying, I mean drinking towers of cocktails. When most people head to Angkor around 5am to view the sunrise, we had a casual late breakfast, took our bikes and went to buy our tickets at 10am. Normally there are mass queues but it seems we were late enough to miss it all. Sometimes it pays to be lazy. After purchasing our day ticket for $20USD each, it was time to get going.

We decided on cycling the Grand Tour backwards (i.e. leaving Angkor Wat until last) and spent our day going from temple to temple, enjoying the sights, the trees and the cycling all the while becoming increasingly dehydrated due to the heat and lack of breeze. We made several stops to consume full strength soft drinks (so not me I know) just to get some sugar into our bodies as eating was not an option as it was too hot. The temples were just beautiful with each vastly different to one another (see photos). Jamie and I tried to work out a). Where did all the stone come from to make the temples and b). What drew them to this area in the first place. The plan was to educate ourselves on this later on by a visit to the Angkor Museum but.... more on that later.

We dodged downpours of rain in the late afternoon whilst walking around Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat and by the time we came to leave Angkor Wat (our last stop) it was torrential and we still had to cycle 13km in the twilight which was quickly turning to darkness with no street lights, no bike lights or reflective clothing. It was probably one of the scary/fun rides of my life, with the sound of the rain pelting down drowing out my giggles and pleas to the tuk tuk gods for one not to hit us.

We arrived back at our semi fancy hotel, drenched, and had to do what felt like a walk of shame back to our room. We tried to walk on our tip toes to reduce the sound of our shoes squelching across the floor while Chinese tourists stared at us like we had just shot a Panda (#tropicthunder).

After we had dried off, we went into town for a quick dinner for a debrief of the sights we had seen that day, unaware of the pain and sickness that was already making itself known within my poor body.Read more