Angkor

Cambodia’s golden age

We’ve merely been in Cambodia for an hour and we already noticed plenty of signs with “Cambodian people’s party” written on them. These signs are literally everywhere, in the middle of a small village, in front of someone’s house or just in the middle of nowhere. The Cambodians seem to try hard to forget their recent and horrific past by making the present omnipresent. But you’ll read more about this certain history in our next blog post. For now, we’ll go even further back in the past, to the 12th century to be precise, to the time of the great Angkor Wat.

Shortly after arriving in Siem Reap, the closest city near the temple complex of Angkor, we try to find out on how to visit the famous temples. The one and only answer seems: by tuktuk. The distances between the different temples are simply too big and the weather too hot. We ask about renting a bicycle and the locals explain that we would be crazy to go around on those old things. Besides that, we would have to make a really big detour since the ticket office recently moved (while the prices were doubled), far away from the only road to the temples. It does seem as if people are trying to discourage us from trying to travel on the cheap.

We do however choose to go around by bicycle and happily ignore the advice and 730 warnings of the locals. The ticket office does seem to have moved but the distance doesn’t come close to what we’re told. Upon checking our tickets all guards ask why we are biking. Why don’t we use a tuktuk? They know a really good guy who can show us around tomorrow. Simply everyone here knows a guy with a tuktuk!

It might seem clear to you already that bicycles are often frowned upon. The tuktuk is the only way to go in Angkor (and Siem Reap), and if you don’t like paying four times more for the comfort of a tuktuk instead of two bicycles people do look down upon you, as if you’re stolen something from them. We obviously don’t care one single bit about all that and happily bike around the amazing temples. Just to be clear: biking though Angkor is perfectly doable!

After four paragraphs we have to start talking about the temples themselves. The most known one is obviously Angkor Wat, its world famous silhouette even decorates the Cambodian flag. Angkor Wat definitely is the “place to be” during sunrise and also the best-preserved complex in the area. It is, however, not the most magical one according to us. There are several other enchanting temples such as Bayon – between the walls of Angkor Thom – with it’s many faces scanning the neighbourhood, Preah Khan and Ta Prohm (from the Tomb Raider movie) which are both being ensnared by the almighty jungle. The ambiance in these last two temples is especially captivating.

Angkor is without a shadow of doubt worth its place on everyone’s bucket list. After visiting Bagan in Myanmar recently, traveling Indochina extensively the past couple of weeks and having seen thousands upon thousands of temples in the past year, we can’t deny that we were just a little bit worried about being fed up with all those temples by the time we made it to Angkor. Fortunately our fear was ill-founded and we left the complex with a thousand pictures to keep as a memory.

Recommendations

• Use a bicycle! Do not listen to the remarks of the locals and keep on repeating: “no tuktuk today or tomorrow”. There’s even a t-shirt with these exact words.

• General tip: find out when the organized tours visit the temples and make sure you visit them at another time of the day. All temples lose most of their magic as soon as the organized tours spoil the beauty and calm of the temple and its surroundings. Two specific tips:

• Visit Angkor Wat around noon, most tour groups are having lunch at this time of the day. If you do want to see the sunrise (it’s quite the experience), go early and look at which pond most people are (most probably the left one), then go to the other one. When we arrived there were already hundreds of people at the left pond and only one guy at the right pond. Don’t follow the masses!

• Don’t visit Angkor Wat after sunrise but immediately go to another one, a lot of people visit Angkor Wat after sunrise, which makes it impossible to look at all the beautiful carvings in peace.

• Ta Prohm is simply amazing even though it can get quite busy. The director of the movie Tomb Raider made the perfect choice when choosing this location. A good time to visit is just after sunrise; by the time you’re done the complex is packed with tour groups.

• Preah Khan is similar to Ta Prohm but lesser known. It seems that less people visit this place, which is a shame since it’s quite astonishing.

Striking

• Everything can be paid for in US Dollars. Cambodia does have its own currency, the Cambodian riel, but they almost never use it. Even in supermarkets all prices are shown in dollars. They however do not use coins, this they solve by giving back riel.

• You can find all sorts of fried stuff on the night markets. Not only the typical fried grasshopper or cockroach, but also fried snake, scorpion and tarantula are waiting for people with messed-up appetites.

• All tourist markets in Southeast Asia seem to buy their goods from the same wholesaler. We’ve seen the same clothes with the same prints for months now.