Siem Reap - The Temples of Angkor

Hi All,

Siem Reap was our last stop with Matt and Imy. The town itself is quite touristy with markets, boutique galleries and a huge range of restaurants and bars (we sampled a fair few). It is also known for what is arguably South East Asia’s most impressive temple complex - Angkor World Heritage Site. We spent 5 days here exploring the ancient temples in the day and relaxing by our rooftop pool come afternoon.

The enormous temple complex was home to the Ankorian empire from the 9th to the 15th century. At the fall of the Angkorian period, nearly all of Angkor was abandoned except for Angkor Wat which remained a Buddhist temple. So while some of the temples have been well restored, others like Beng Mealea still seem lost to the jungle. Many of the temples are huge; some are over 50 meters tall with walls and moats over a mile long. We travelled between them in remok-moto (a cross between a moped, taxi and chariot) driven by our friendly driver Mr Sour! We visited too many to cover the details of them all but our top ones were:

Ta Prom

Nicknamed the ‘Tomb Raider Temple’, as much of the Angelina Jolie film was shot here. This mysterious temple is over ran by the jungle there are the roots of huge trees intertwined with the moss covered stonework. While inside, despite the lack of bull whip and fedora, Ross channelled his inner Indian Jones!

Bayon

This temple is the heart of the greater Angkor Thom complex. Once inside, we marvelled at the intricate carvings and the 1.2 kilometres of bass reliefs which were decorated with more than 11,000 figures telling historical stories (Matt loved a good carving). The highlight here though was the 216 huge smiling stone faces that can be seen once on the upper layer - up to 19 of these can be staring down on you at any one point. The 350 metre long Terrace of Elephants located outside of Bayon of course won Danielle’s heart.

Angkor Wat

This amazing temple is the national symbol of Cambodia, even making it to the centre of their flag and the head of the Khmer civilisation. Including its moat, Angkor Wat itself has a footprint almost the size of the city of London! It is the largest religious building in the world. We decided to explore this incredible temple at sunrise - a guide book must for anyone visiting.

One afternoon, we headed further afield to see some of Angkor’s more remote temples. Banteay Srei was incredibly well preserved with intricate carvings of Buddhist and Hindu mythology. After a 2km uphill hike we reached the carved riverbed of Kbal Spean, known more commonly as the ‘River of a Thousand Lingas’. Then we headed to Beng Mealea. Exploring this temple built to the same footprint of Angkor Wat, it really felt like we had stepped into the set of Tomb Raider. The temple has not been maintained for over 800 years and the forest has run amok; trees have sprouted up on top of the temple as well as beneath, causing much of the structure to collapse.

Back in the Siem Reap, we went to a brilliant evening show at the circus. The performers all trained at a charity funded school for children from deprived backgrounds. The current performance called ‘Same Same but Different’ was a hilarious portrayal of the everyday interactions between Cambodian people and tourists. We also played a tense game of crazy golf on our first evening as Matt was adamant that he wanted to put a ball through mini Angkor Wat before seeing the real thing in all its glory.

As well as sampling more delicious Khmer food including coconut curries and beef lok lak, we had some great Mexican and Greek as well. We became regulars at an amazing Italian gelato shop, managing to work our way through all the flavours between us. Less tasty were the crickets that Ross had to eat as a forfeit for coming last at crazy golf. Now our holiday on holiday is over and Matt and Imy have gone home, we won’t be able to enjoy beers and cocktails every day anymore - back to cheap street food and water for us.

Thanks for a great holiday Matt and Imy! Next stop for us - Laos.

Love R and D xxx