Temple-trekking the amazing Angkor!

26th - 29th July 2012

1 sunrise, 2 days, 10 temples, 14 hours of exploring, 30km on a bicycle, 45km on a tuk-tuk and 450 photos later - temple trekking at the amazing Angkor Wat was completed!

The Temples of Angkor are billed as the Eighth Wonder of the World and are really the only reason to come to Siem Reap and, believe me, it is well worth the visit. It was spectacular, if a little tough going at times! 

We arrived in Siem Reap late in the afternoon on Thursday 26th July so after familiarising ourselves with the town, we started the preparations for the marathon session which was to be temple-trekking at the Temples of Angkor. You know that I really meant business when my camel pack came out again (or the catheter thing as I was calling it until yesterday as I didn't know the proper name for it!

We hired a tuk-tuk and driver for our first full day in Siem Reap (Friday 27th July) to bring us to the Angkor so organised him to collect us at 5am.  The day didn't start too good when Ronan knocked his camera over (first time on his new tripod) and it went sliding down a hill but I managed to catch it just before it slipped into the lake - phew! It was a ridiculously close one. Then straight afterwards I walked into an ant farm and had about 100 little buggers crawling all over my feet biting me! Ouchies!

We were eager to do sunrise here considering this is the stereotypical image of Angkor Wat:

Unfortunately this is a stock photo from google images!

Unfortunately the weather had other ideas and we  had no sunrise at all, just a vague changing of the sky from black to grey.  It was still amazing though and had a really great atmosphere so was worth the early rise for that alone. Ronan's new photography skills helped though and we got some really great shots.

Although we have bought a huge oil painting of the sunset that will show us what we should have seen forever more!  We spent the rest of the morning going around the other temples in the complex, Angkor Wat is only one of about a thousand temples in the Angkor Wat complex but it is the biggest, and arguably, the most spectacular.  There were numerous scenes from Tomb Raider filmed around the temples so some of you might recognise some of them from the film.

Peek-a-boo

Tomb Raider tree

By the power of Greyskull

As the Angkor complex is spread over 1,000 sq kilometres, we used our tuk-tuk driver to bring us to some of the further away temples for our first visit and we decided to cycle out ourselves for our second visit to main ones closer to Siem Reap.  The cycle was about 30km in total which was fine except we had done so much walking around while we were out there that we were wrecked cycling back in. As it had been raining the streets were soaking so we were never as tired and dirty (I mean totally filthy!) as when we arrived back in the hotel this afternoon (Sunday 29th July) after 8.5hours. We had another early start leaving the hotel at 6am to get out there before it got really  hot and to try to beat the huge crowds.  It worked though!

When we weren't temple-trekking we could be found relaxing by the pool, eating and drinking to recover.

All cafes should be set up like this!

 This was my favourite bar, it made me laugh everytime we passed it!