Ancient Angkor and Siem Reap

The riding to Siem Reap further confirmed the awesome cycling in Cambodia as we were serenaded by hellos from the villagers, young and old alike. The bucolic scenery and incredibly laid back feeling that permeated the air made for a relaxing ride. We came up on a lot of student bicycle traffic as we cycled through the small towns that dotted the highway. The kids really interact with us: some cycle alongside us for as long as they can and more often than not the girls will say hello and then giggle to each other excitedly and a little embarrassed. The kilometers really fly by when you've got so many people to engage with and we're both finding it easier to cycle further with fewer breaks overall. We must have said hello over 100 times each on our route. We've talked a lot about how it's difficult to stay upset when you've got such an engaging and decidedly positive audience.

We stopped in one of the little roadside towns for a break and found our order of two coconuts to be quite entertaining for the shop owners. E. showed her skills at coconut eating, using the "spoon" to carve out the meat.

It’s the season for babies here and we're delighted to see all the chicks, ducklings, piglets, puppies, kittens, cowlets, etc… from the road as we cycle by. We're also a bit surprised by how many there are, as it seems like every family has some of each type!

Coming into Siem Reap we were impressed and a little taken aback at just how many monstrous resort type hotels there were lining the highway from about 5kms out. These mega hotels didn't crop up much inside the town though. Most of the hotels, restaurants, and business inside the town itself maintained a certain charm and came in more modest sizes. The streets of the travelers market areas were close and tidy with lots of patio dining spilling into the narrow lanes. The dining and drinking options were impressively international and the smell of food and enticement of cozy chairs and quaint little bistros was a welcome sight. We opted for a dinner of Mexican food (not expecting much after our sad experiences in NZ and AUS) and ended up with excellent food and some seriously stiff margaritas! Our guest house of choice "Ivy Guesthouse II" was a short pleasant 10 minute walk from the hustle and bustle of the Pub Street and Night Markets and meandered along the river. The room was decent and cheap at $6 per night and the restaurant out front was a great shady hideaway, perfect for a quiet breakfast.

We opted for cycling to Angkor Wat and followed the flow of Tuk Tuks toting their foreign or "Barang" passengers. We drew no smiles and hardly any second looks from the other tourists but still got lots of attention from the Cambodians, especially those cycling along the same route.

The roads inside the park are in the process of being upgraded and for the most part were better than 90% of the roads back home in Seattle. I would certainly recommend seeing the temples by bicycle for anyone planning to visit. The wide lanes are shaded by huge trees, the traffic is mostly two wheeled and no one seems to be in a hurry. There are tons of bike rental places around Siem Reap if your hotel doesn't already have a fleet of cycles for you to choose from. We came to the complex without a map, surprise surprise, and figured we'd easily locate one at any of the many small vendors who work around the temples. We did finally manage to find a few ladies with guide books but not until about half way through our first day so we're a little unsure of the history and significance of the first few sites we visited.

The first place we came upon was a mountain-like hill called Phnom Bakheng with its very steep and quite ruined stone stairway flanked by two lion statues. The staircase heads seemingly straight up into the jungle but is closed off to visitors these days in an effort to preserve it as much as that’s possible. We noticed signs and a structure at the foot of the hill that indicated that there was the option of taking an elephant to reach the top, or an option of climbing a newly constructed stairway. The place seemed deserted of both elephants and people, and we thought it'd be reasonably easy to ride our bikes up the elephant track, so we did just that. Half and hour of ruddy switchback riding and one spill later we were at the top; pleased and surprised to find a beautiful temple with an incredible view of the surrounding jungle with temples peeking out here and there. We got our first taste of the steep and ancient stairs that can be found at almost every temple in Angkor Wat. It's great to be able to traverse the temples with little or no policing of your activities and a complete lack of warning signs pointing out all to obvious risks. It's clear that if you don't bring some decent common sense with you on your visit you might end up taking one step too many as you're backing up to get the right shot of that Buddha - and go right off the edge, however we didn't see that happen or hear any ambulances during our visit.



After descending along the same elephant track we spent the next few hours at Bayon, a huge complex with giant faces on every side of the conical towers. There are 54 towers at Bayon with 216 smiling faces seemingly observing you from every direction. This temple is in fine shape and has definitely undergone more rebuilding and maintenance than that of Phnom Bakheng, which was in a glorious statue of disrepair and who's gardeners seemed to be just barely keeping the plants and trees from taking her over. We got our first glimpse of the bas-reliefs that these temples are known for; the Apsara Dancers being some of the most stunning. It's interesting to note that the towers were constructed with the largest blocks at the bottom and increasingly smaller blocks toward the top. This gives an impression of the towers being of even greater height than they already are.



We stopped for lunch where we got our first real taste of the kids that work the tourists over inside the park. We resisted their touting efforts and engaged them in conversation instead. All the kids know certain facts about certain countries and they'll ask "where you from" and when we say the U.S. they say "Capital Washington D.C. president Obama". Most of the time the kids speak more English than their parents who run the shops, and thus do a lot of the translation. We found them fun and funny with good humor even when they were finally convinced that we weren't going to buy 10 bamboo bracelets.



Before the afternoon had thoroughly cooked us we managed to see the Royal Palace grounds. These were the only surviving structures actually built for habitation, the rest of the existing structures around Angkor Wat were purely religious. The terrace of the elephants and Terrace of the Leper King were our last conquests of the day. We got some great pictures of the incredible elephant carvings and some of the more out of the way bas-reliefs in the Terrace of the Leper King. The immense detail becomes a bit overwhelming as you take it all in, trying to see everything and appreciate every detail. It seems as though one could revisit the same sight for days and still miss plenty of the carvings!




Our second day we spent some more time around the Royal Palace Grounds, saw Ta Phrom Kel, Preah Khan, and the famous Ta Phrom temple that you might have seen if you're keen on the Indiana Jones movies. We loved the controlled state of decay at Ta Phrom with the gigantic trees that have made themselves part of the temple, and part of it's decay. The temples a little further from the main tourist complexes are usually littered with stone blocks that have tumbled from their original placements and have since been collected, arranged, and often numbered in preparation for what seems like their inevitable reconstruction. Quite a few of the more prominent temples are currently closed off to the public as foreign countries sponsor their rebuilding, some in their 9th or 10th years of their reconstruction. The rain cut our tour of Ta Phrom short as it came in fast and furious, soaking everyone and everything caught out beyond the shelter of the little restaurant huts that line the roads leading to any of the given temples gates. We slogged back to the hotel soaked to the bone, Gore Tex shoes acting like buckets keeping the water in instead of keeping it out.



Our last day of the Temple Pass we opted to take a Tuk Tuk to see the sunrise at the main Angkor Wat temple. It's a popular thing to do and we weren't even close to being the only foreigners rising and shining before their hotels kitchen staff, to get ourselves out to the temples. Fortunately before the sun had even risen we had already been offered coffee and breakfast by at least 3 separate shop owners who are set up just adjacent to the best photo ops at Angkor Wat. The sunrise was less spectacular than it can be in the dry season but we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless. We toured the famous galleries of Angkor Wat and were amazed at the detail in the depiction of the Hindu stories we found there. The temple was beautiful in the low light of early morning and E. got in some great shots with the camera. By day 3 the temples started to run together and we started to run out of steam, taking fewer and fewer photos and finding ourselves looking forward to a cool drink and a breezy tuk tuk ride more than another steep set of temple stairs to yet another fantastic vantage point.



We spent the last night picking up a new laptop at a little computer shop in town, happily ending up with an Acer Aspire One in a bicycle tour friendly size. Weighing in at just over 2 pounds this little blue jewel just barely outweighs E.s current book (A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth coming in at around 1500 pages). We're already Skyping away WITH VIDEO so look us up with Z.'s email address if you want to chat.

CHECK OUT ALL OUR ANGKOR WAT PHOTOS AT:
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