Altering my plans slightly, on Monday 7th I took a bus to Siem Reap (the home of Angkor Wat). For the first time ever, I actually felt tall because I had no leg room in a cramped seat for 6 hrs.
Our roadside stop in the journey met us with hundreds of people trying to sell us pineapple and mango, which was delicious. However I turned down the more exotic deep fried spiders and cicadas.
Siem Reap is completely a tourist town. There must be 10s of thousands of tourists here. The locals speak excellent English and they have even established offical taxi drivers to try and lessen the hassle of "tuk-tuk, lady?". It's still worse than Phnom Penh. What's better is that there are no children in the town streets selling things and no one is allowed in the restaurant area to try and sell to tourists.
Our tuk-tuk driver became our guide for our 3 day visit to the temples. I joined Susie and Chris, because it made it so much cheaper and we've been having such fun. He took us out to get our temple pass and we were able to see the sunset over the temples. The landscape is so much different here. It is beautiful, green jungle that is well looked after. The amount of smoke and dust in the air and the extreme traffic near the temples suggests that the environment is the loser.
The most overrated sunset ever, with a thousand people climbing a hill to sit on an ancient temple and watch the sun through thick haze! The first view of Angkor was breathtaking though!
Dinner at a Mexican restaurant, where I had a burrito that tasted delicious, turned out to be a bad idea.
Got up at 5.30 the next morning to see sunrise behind Angkor Wat. It was pretty, certainly lots of people waiting for the sun to come up, but not so many actually wandering inside the temple itself. The golden light of morning made the intricate bas reliefs glow (carvings of the Aspara dancers, whose body proportions resemble that of Barbie!)
Had breakfast at a local restaurant - there are so many places to eat and shop around the temples. The locals certainly know what tourists need.
Next was the Bayon Temple - that's the one that has towers with lots of faces on it. Unfortunately, I didn't get much chance to see this as by the time I had climbed up it I was dripping with sweat and my stomach was churning.
Without saying too much more, I went back to my hotel on the back of a moto (which was not a great idea with an upset stomach) and have spent the next 24hrs feeling pretty terrible in my hotel room. Thankfully there is an excellent chemist that had everything I needed and I've even managed to eat some toast today....
Tomorrow is the last day of my Angkor pass, so I've missed a whole day of temple viewing and I'm determined to go. Luckily the toilets at Angkor are excellent and everywhere! I'm pretty disappointed as this was what I was most looking forward to, but I think I might have been templed out after 3 days anyway. The huge number of tourists is a bit of a turn off too. My suggestion would be that if you want to see Angkor - do it soon, before it gets ruined and even more overrun with tourism.
Our roadside stop in the journey met us with hundreds of people trying to sell us pineapple and mango, which was delicious. However I turned down the more exotic deep fried spiders and cicadas.
Siem Reap is completely a tourist town. There must be 10s of thousands of tourists here. The locals speak excellent English and they have even established offical taxi drivers to try and lessen the hassle of "tuk-tuk, lady?". It's still worse than Phnom Penh. What's better is that there are no children in the town streets selling things and no one is allowed in the restaurant area to try and sell to tourists.
Our tuk-tuk driver became our guide for our 3 day visit to the temples. I joined Susie and Chris, because it made it so much cheaper and we've been having such fun. He took us out to get our temple pass and we were able to see the sunset over the temples. The landscape is so much different here. It is beautiful, green jungle that is well looked after. The amount of smoke and dust in the air and the extreme traffic near the temples suggests that the environment is the loser.
The most overrated sunset ever, with a thousand people climbing a hill to sit on an ancient temple and watch the sun through thick haze! The first view of Angkor was breathtaking though!
Dinner at a Mexican restaurant, where I had a burrito that tasted delicious, turned out to be a bad idea.
Got up at 5.30 the next morning to see sunrise behind Angkor Wat. It was pretty, certainly lots of people waiting for the sun to come up, but not so many actually wandering inside the temple itself. The golden light of morning made the intricate bas reliefs glow (carvings of the Aspara dancers, whose body proportions resemble that of Barbie!)
Had breakfast at a local restaurant - there are so many places to eat and shop around the temples. The locals certainly know what tourists need.
Next was the Bayon Temple - that's the one that has towers with lots of faces on it. Unfortunately, I didn't get much chance to see this as by the time I had climbed up it I was dripping with sweat and my stomach was churning.
Without saying too much more, I went back to my hotel on the back of a moto (which was not a great idea with an upset stomach) and have spent the next 24hrs feeling pretty terrible in my hotel room. Thankfully there is an excellent chemist that had everything I needed and I've even managed to eat some toast today....
Tomorrow is the last day of my Angkor pass, so I've missed a whole day of temple viewing and I'm determined to go. Luckily the toilets at Angkor are excellent and everywhere! I'm pretty disappointed as this was what I was most looking forward to, but I think I might have been templed out after 3 days anyway. The huge number of tourists is a bit of a turn off too. My suggestion would be that if you want to see Angkor - do it soon, before it gets ruined and even more overrun with tourism.
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