The temples of Angkor

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Trip Start Aug 24, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Jul 07, 2009 Next
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  Siem Reap, Cambodia
Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The boat took about 7 hours to get to Siem Reap. We passed pretty little floating villages, rice fields, fishing villages, children waving and screaming with excitement at seeing the foreigners, and endless stretches of countryside. At one point the river became so thick with weeds that it looked like we were sailing on grass. We eventually reached the Tonle Sap Lake, which is so big it looked like we were at saw. We took a little channel through the trees and continued to Siem Reap. There we were bombarded by tuk tuk drivers who mobbed us as we tried to get off the boat. We eventually got a lift to town and checked in to a hotel. We then organized our trip to the temples of Angkor Wat for the next 3 days. In the evening we went to a Cambodian bbq restaurant where we ate bbq crocodile, and other meats. The bbq is on a little hill so the juices drip into a trough full of water which you can later drink as a soup which was very nice. They call it the hill of fire.
 
The next 3 days we spent looking around the temples of Angkor Wat. We must have seen about 25 temples and so I would bore everyone if I went into detailed descriptions of each one. We took about 500 photos in 3 days of the temples so I have only put a small selection on this site. The temples were all amazing with very impressive architecture and a feeling of being lost in the jungle. I will summarise the best ones:
 
Angkor Wat: The biggest and best preserved, it was huge and covered in carvings. It was surrounded by a massive moat.
Phnom Bakeng: We had to climb up a massive hill to see this one, and you could see Angkor Wat from the top.
Angkor Thom: A massive complex that consisted of my favourite temple, Bayon, and also the Terrace of Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King, among many others.
Bayon: My favourite one. Made of lots of towers with faces on them. Very impressive.
Ta Prohm: Another favourite, it has been taken over by the jungle and has trees growing out of it, wrapping their roots around it like triffids. It was used to film Tomb Raider. It was so good we went twice!
Banteay Samre: David's favourite, it had loads of ornate carvings and huge empty pools with little buildings in them. When the pools were filled with water it would have been even better!
We also visited Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon, Pre Rup, Banteay Kdei and Sras Srang, as well as lots of little ones.
 
We had a very nice man in a tuk tuk who took us around the temples, and waited patiently as we spent hours and hours in each one!
 
In the evenings we tried the lovely curries and drank the local beer (yes, even me!).
 
Today is our last day in Siem Reap and we took our trusty tuk tuk to Beng Melea, a far away temple. It took 2 hours to get there. We got there to find a very crumbled temple which was being eaten by the jungle. We walked about and found a snake up a tree, which gave me a fright! Then we went exploring. Because the temple was so crumbled we could climb over the rubble and find lost corridors and passageways full of dust. David kept humming the Indiana Jones these tune. He was dressed all in beige, so I think he was feeling like Indiana Jones. He kept scampering over the rocks and swinging from the vines as I struggled to keep up with him! It felt like a true adventure!

Another thing we did was visit the Cambodian landmines museum, which was very sad, as there were lots of pictures of maimed people. There are lots of mines still in the ground here and every year many people get injured by them. The museum raises money to deactivate them and help the people injured by them, so I bought their T shirt to contribute to the cause.
 
This afternoon we had lunch in a butterfly sanctuary with the butterflies flying about and now we are internetting. Tomorrow we are taking a very early bus to Kompong Cham.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family Pictures

A fishing net	A floating house	Attack of the killer trees!	Attack of the trees in Ta Prohm
Balloon over the Wat	Banteay Kdei	Bayon was very impressive	Carvings on the Terrace of the Leper King
Climbing the temples	Crazy trees in Ta Prohm	Dark Corridors in Beng Melea	David
David at Angkor Wat	David at Banteay Srey	David at Bayon	David at Preah Khan
David at Ta Keo temple	David climbs the rubble	David goes adventuring	David in a corridor at Angkor Wat
David on a vine at Beng Melea	David with snake track	David with the hill of fire	Decorated bridge
Eaten by a tree, Ta Prohm	Elephant statue at East Mebon	Faces at Bayon	Houses on stilts
In the corridors	Me at Angkor Wat	Me at Banteay Kdei	Me at Banteay Srey
Me at Bayon	Me at Neak Pean	Me at Phnom Bakheng	Me at Ta Prohm
Me at the entrance to Preah Khan	Me on the boat to Siem Reap	Me on the second visit to Ta Prohm	Me up the side of a temple
Me with Angkor, again!	Me with the rubble	Me with the ruins of Beng Melea	More Bayon, sorry!
Snake up a tree	So much weed you can't see the river	Sras Srang	Ta Som tree and me
Temple carvings	The moat of Angkor Wat	THe view from Phnom Bakheng	Us at Beng Melea
We went to see some traditional dancing

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