The Temples of Angkor - Siem Reap, Cambodia

Current status - We're in Saigon and thankfully, it's tons better than Hanoi!!

30th April 2008
What can a mere human say to describe this place? We've seen many temples and ancient architecture but even Penshaw Monument can't compete with this. Ladies and Gentlemen, may we present the WORLDS LARGEST RELIGIOUS BUILDING - Angkor Wat.

It was built by the ancient Khmer Empire between the 9th and 13th centuries when the empire stretched from Burma to Vietnam, then, unbelievably the entire place was lost for centuries to the world - completely overgrown by jungle. In 18th century a Frenchman named Henri Mouhot (Bonjower) was out roaming about the jungle wearing only a pair of speedos looking for snails and happened to find this amazing complex of ancient temples overgrown in the dense jungle. It's now, not surprisingly, one of the wonders of the world. This is an epic blog, so take your time to work through the pictures please and don't be rushing to the end to see who won the free cups of tea or looking for the cup of tea questions so you can be first to answer- we know who your are!


The first pictures are of Angkor Wat at sunrise (above) - yes that's right, while you lot were all in bed waiting for the alarm to go off, we were out there working hard for the blog! This is 5am and the sun is just coming up behind the temple.


This is how it looks a couple of hours later.





The first day we hired a driver for 15 dollars for the whole day and he drives you around in a kind of horse drawn carriage that has a motorbike welded onto the front of it - very comfortable but not the safest contraption we've ever rode on.






The entire place is covered in amazing structures. This is one of the five entrance gates that lead in to Angkor Thom. As you look through these pictures you may be reminded of some film scenes. Inspiration for Indiana Jones films and actual jungle scenes (see later pictures) were used in Tomb Raider.

Great big faces of the Gods are all over place. Bayon temple has 216 gargantuan faces of Avalokiteshiara! (Get 'the Bomber' to say that without his teeth in)







This is a poor innocent woman trying to make a living selling fresh fruit about to be 'bargained' into submission by Elvis! No, the truth is you always have to be on the ball, prices tend to rise considerably when a 'Westerner' is spotted.

I have never seen sights like this - it just doesn't look real! This does give some idea of how long this place was lost, the whole area was covered with trees this size and in some places (like this picture) the trees are so entrenched into the structure they can't remove them.

The largest temple, Angkor Wat from a distance. The main structure has four massive towers surrounding a large tower in the middle. The whole place is adorned with bass relief carvings - mostly of battles between good and evil.

Look at the gate behind the elephant - just amazing!

Another temple, Angkor Thom.

This is our favourite place - Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm has literally 'merged' with nature and can't be separated. They left all the trees in place because if they remove them it would crumble. So a lot of the temple is a metamorphosis (oooohhhh) of ancient bricks and trees - right out of Indiana Jones!

On the second day we ditched the 'motorbike drawn chariot' and took bikes. This is not for the faint hearted! It's 7km there and 7km back and the grand tour is 22km. Quite an exhausting trip but one of the best we've done. There was however some whinging going on while riding back when we got lost for a short while!!

"Le Posers!"

The last view of Angkor Wat as we left the temple grounds - 'Knackered' on our bikes!

This may look like we're in a hospital bed! No, not quite. This is a bakery/cafe with the biggest sofa's we've ever seen. You sit on them like you would your nest, then they put a 'lap table' over your .. erm lap I suppose and you sit drinking coffee and eating cake and inevitably, you fall asleep! Well we did, we'd just finished a 36km bike ride so we did earn it!

On the way around the complex we saw these kids making 'trucks' from old plastic bottles. We stopped and played games with them for a while then took a video of them pulling their trucks along. It was the funniest thing when we showed them the video - they belly laughed at each other. Again, kids with absolutely nothing having such fun. When we left Elvis had a tear in her eye. They all stood and waved us off in their raggy clothes and dirty faces.

If you fancy an ice cream in Cambodia be very careful to order the correct flavour or you could be in for a bit of a surprise!!!!!

After Siam Reap it was off to the airport. Here we are about to board the plane for yet another new country - and capital city! This plane is bound for Hanoi in Vietnam and that's for another blog!



On the way to Siam Reap the bus stopped at a kind of truck stop/rest area. The place was swarming with ladies trying to sell their wares - mainly to the locals. There was sugar cane bread (we tried - we liked mmmm), hard boiled eggs and lots of other things we weren't sure of. This woman though takes the prize! A free cup of tea to the first person who can tell me what's up for sale here, a clue would be that it's definitely not blue wildebeest. We didn't eat any by the way!

Previous cups of tea questions - a clean sweep by Ginny and her outsourcer, the Khmer Rouge, Pol pot and of course the film - 'The killing fields'. Erm, brother AKA Un Big One, 'Jaws' was good - but it's not right (said in an Irish twang).