Warning! This is going to be a long post :-)
The journey from koh rong to siem reap was the journey from hell, so some it up succinctly. It started with a trip on a catamaran across to the main land tackling our way over 3-4m waves and then a night bus which was making similar motions over the horrendous road for 12 hours. Another common factor was that numerous people were throwing up. So after that ordeal I finally arrived in siem reap, sat down to have some breakfast in the hostel and a very nice dutch girl called marieke came to sit next to me and we ended up spending a lovely day checking out the city and the market.
I was very tired so went to bed early after we had arranged to get up at 4.30am to meet our tuk tuk driver Ngug and head to the temples for the day.
Could have obviously slept for longer but I launched myself out of bed and got ready. Ngug, an elderly cambodian man who never failed to smile and laugh, was waiting for us and we went to collect two more girls we'd met the day before, before we went to angkor wat for sunrise.
There were quite a few tourists but it was still a wonderful experience. It was really quite mystical walking through the temples at dusk. The atmosphere had a light buzz of anticipation and excitement as we all stood waiting for the sun.
It was quite amusing watching the other tourists and we saw lots of chinese people taking more pictures of themselves than of the temples.
The journey from koh rong to siem reap was the journey from hell, so some it up succinctly. It started with a trip on a catamaran across to the main land tackling our way over 3-4m waves and then a night bus which was making similar motions over the horrendous road for 12 hours. Another common factor was that numerous people were throwing up. So after that ordeal I finally arrived in siem reap, sat down to have some breakfast in the hostel and a very nice dutch girl called marieke came to sit next to me and we ended up spending a lovely day checking out the city and the market.
I was very tired so went to bed early after we had arranged to get up at 4.30am to meet our tuk tuk driver Ngug and head to the temples for the day.
Could have obviously slept for longer but I launched myself out of bed and got ready. Ngug, an elderly cambodian man who never failed to smile and laugh, was waiting for us and we went to collect two more girls we'd met the day before, before we went to angkor wat for sunrise.
There were quite a few tourists but it was still a wonderful experience. It was really quite mystical walking through the temples at dusk. The atmosphere had a light buzz of anticipation and excitement as we all stood waiting for the sun.
We headed back to find Ngug and started to driver around to the other temples.the site is phenomenal and at each temple marieke read a section from her guidebook so we knew what we were looking at. The first european visitors to the site came to the site in 1907. This was when the french 'discovered' the site. The only temple that had inhabitants was angkor wat and the others were over grown by jungle.
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| The above pictures are of Angkor Wat |
It was quite amusing watching the other tourists and we saw lots of chinese people taking more pictures of themselves than of the temples.
A few of the temples had sections being restored. We learnt that the government tried to clean the temples with acid...so the germans have stepped in and run the majority of restoration projects.
The following temple was one of my favourites because hundreds of years ago someone decided to take apart sections of the temple to repair the stones. However before the temple was put back together, war broke out and the blue prints were lost so the puzzle remains a mystery and the stones remain on the floor surrounding the temple.
we invited Ngug for lunch which he was quite happy about and managed to get a good price! Getting quite good at bargaining!
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| Temple buddies |
After a fantastic day exploring these wonderful ancient buildings we made it to the sunset point and enjoyed the sit down taking in a beautiful view.
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| I had to take a picture of this guy. He has the most ridiculous selfie stick I have ever seen. |
Sounds very nice after such horrible ride. You look so small ;)
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