We woke up on our first morning in Siem Reap with so much excitement. It would be the day when we’d finally get to see for ourselves some of the most famous historical buildings in the world, the Angkor Wat temples!
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Siem Reap had just recovered from a major flood so it was quite dusty. Although flood is quite common in Cambodia, the one that they just had was quite unusual and it had dragged on for months together with the one in Thailand.
At the heights of the flood crisis, a number of tourists had to be airlifted from the temples because all the exit roads were submerged in water.
We were lucky because we got there when the floods had already receded. The flood had done pretty much damage to the road especially those within the township area. There were damages and cracks here and there and much of the roads were covered in clay dust.
One thing you gotta know about Angkor Wat is that the temples are located quite a distance away from the town of Siem Reap so you (may) need a transport to go there. Our initial idea was to rent a motorbike to get around but we had come to find out that tourists are not allowed to rent motorbikes in Siem Reap. I guess it was intended to keep the businesses going for the Tuk Tuks.
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I had come to find out too that all the Tuk Tuks have some common price for a tour to Angkor Wat temples. Of course a little bit of negotiation might help drag the price down a little but most of them would charge USD15 for a one-day tour.
We needed at least two days to cover the major temples so that would cost us some USD30 which, if divided among us three, is actually quite reasonable. To make things easier for us, we actually asked Melissa the hostel owner to arrange for a Tuk Tuk for us.
When I first heard about the admission fee to Angkor Wat temples, I was like ‘whatttttt??’. Yeah, USD40 for an admission fee is not cheap for poor South East Asian like us. I remembered rolling my eyes a little when I arrived at the gate of Taj Mahal and saw the admission fee to be Rs750 (USD14?).
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But then, as I found out later, they didn’t put the price that much for nothing. My imagination of Angkor Wat had apparently strayed off from how it is in real, that it was not just a single complex of temple but in fact a cluster of so many temples that form a city the size of central New York!
Most tour guides would divide the Angkor Wat into two sections. One is called Mini Tour which is somehow bigger in area than the other one called Grand Tour. Since the admission fee of USD 40 is valid for 3 days, most people would usually allocate one day for the Mini and another day for the Grand. They have the option of doing a third day, just in case two days are not enough or the weather had not been good enough.
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Since Angkor Wat temple (the grand temple) was part of the Mini Tour and we wanted to see it at sunrise, we decided to do the Grand Tour first. We DID have our first glimpse of the Angkor Wat when we were heading towards the Grand-Tour temples and just to know that we were heading there the next day kind of excited us more.
It felt so surreal to be entering the gate of the ancient city of Angkor Wat for the first time. It really felt like being thrown back to those times when nobody knew that the world was actually round and not flat. The lush greenery and beautiful jungle and the sparkling waters that surrounding the city all add up to its stunning beauty and amazing views.
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The area covered in the Grand Tour alone was so big. Although I had the name list of the temples, I actually lost track and couldn’t tell which from which after awhile. Seriously, it was so so huge! A large part of the temples is still undergoing extensive restoration works and hence inaccessible to visitors.
Those are the parts that they can still be recovered. Many of the statues had gone headless so there is no way they can ever restore their original looks. The Tuk Tuk driver told us that the heads were stolen during the Khmer Rouge era when the temples were left abandoned. “The thieves then sold them to Thailand” he explained further which reminded me of one of my favorite movies Ong Bak.
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As I explored further and realized how fast time flew by, I had to agree with Melissa the hostel owner when she said we needed at least one week to check out everything there is at the Angkor Wat temples. The fact that I am a temple junkie myself, I really wanted to look into everything there was and there was certainly so much to look into.
Of course, being in a group of cam-whores doesn’t help much. Angkor Wat is one of those places where you can just snap a picture away and it wouldn’t look bad at all. It really is a perfect place to photograph and to be photographed.
Mind to tell you that taking a tour guide is not really a necessity at Angkor Wat unless you really want to know everything there is to know about the ancient city. The idea of having someone waiting around while we are busy taking pictures didn’t sound at all appealing to us. He’d die of boredom even before we are done with one temple. THAT I can assure you of. LOL
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But then, some people are just so good. Being one of the most visited historical places in the world, the people at Angkor Wat surely know how to pick a few dollars out of a visitor’s pocket. One of the building janitors was standing at one corner of the temple and as we neared to where he was, he began to explain whatever there was to explain about that particular part of the building.
While it was good to have somebody to explain things off the wall carvings and statues and everything, he was actually causing some discomfort among us because we’d prefer to do things freely and unobstructed. He practically wouldn’t say anything to stop us from doing whatever we wanted to do but the fact that he was there waiting to usher us to the next portion of the building was causing some discomfort among us.
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The fact that he was dressed in a government-servant-looking uniform did the trick for him. We really thought he was doing it as part of his job until we arrived at the other end of the temple and he asked for money. Jeez. We should have known that nothing comes for free nowadays. 🙁
There were a few more temples that we went to and I’m sure none of us knew exactly where we were heading to so we actually put our trust wholly in the head of the Tuk Tuk driver to lead our way around. I’d say some of the temples were not really worth the time but then it wasn’t all about the temples but more on the journey.
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Of course, despite the fact that we need a ticket to go to Angkor Wat, the temples are actually scattered all over the place and a big part of the area is occupied by a number of villages with real kampong folks so the sight of kids rambling aimlessly around or women resting under the shade of a tree with their toddlers are quite common. Sometimes, you’ll see kids suddenly come out of nowhere – from behind the walls or in between the ruins or playing in a group somewhere in the corner.
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Quite a number of them are there to sell stuffs and their persistence in getting you to buy at least something from them can be such a haunting experience. They’ll tag right behind you from one corner of the temple right to the other end and believe me, their begging voice of ‘1 Dollar sir’ being repeatedly said will haunt you for many many months to come.
My advice would be, buy at least something. After all it’s only 1 dollar. My travel buddy Ulai DID NOT buy anything from a little girl who had been beginning for her to buy a hand-woven rattan bangle for 1 dollar and she still cries every time she thinks of it now. People can be so cruel and heartless nowadays. LOL
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If I had to pick one temple as my favorite in the Grand Tour, I’d pick the East Mebon. It might have the simplest of design unlike most of the others whose walls are full of intricate carvings, magnificent statues beautiful pillars but there’s something about East Mebon that makes it stand out in my eyes especially the breath-taking view that it offers from the multi-tiered platforms.
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We were so engrossed in the magnificence of the Angkor Wat temples that we didn’t even realize that we had skipped lunch. Time passed by so fast and unnoticed and before we knew the sky was already darkening over Angkor Wat. It wouldn’t be long before night took over.
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We had at least one more temple to go to before we called it a day. A large group of people were already there when we got there. They were all there to witness the sunset taking form over the land horizon of Siem Reap from the Pre Rup temple.
It was unfortunately a cloudy evening so I don’t think the sunset was at its best look. I remember how the sky was so radiantly red at sunset when we did the Mini Tour the next day. Luck didn’t seem to have found its way to us that day. Huhu.
It was already dark when we returned to the town of Siem Reap. Of course after unintentionally fasting for one whole day, we could eat just about every food that comes our way.
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Mind to tell you that those temples that we visited on our first day tour to Angkor Wat were the lesser known temples. The BIG names like Bayon, Ta Prohm (Lara Croft the Tomb Raider!) and of course the Angkor Wat itself is listed under the Mini Tour and just to think that we were going to each of these places the next day was giving me a headache of excitement.
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