Unfortunately this was the fateful night I would lose my camera!! booooooo. I think the only way I survived the trauma is the fact that I have been reading about and exploring the Buddhist inside me (not literally of course)!!
The group we would be doing this trip with was a quite a bit different from the last one as there was an Australian family (mum, dad and young daughter) and also 2 older australian sisters. It was just a surprise as we just expected more people of the same age. Later on we would meet a few of them as they would be meeting us in Siem Reap (home of Angkor Wat).
The first day was a long minivan trip out to the Thai/Cambodian border. It was super hot and we had to lug our huge bags around with us for about an hour while we went through all the checks and checkpoints before finally making it though.
Already the country seemed different to Thailand, as expected it isn't as developed as Thailand but still the people were equally friendly. There was another long bus ride to the hotel in Siem Reap, so by the time we got there we were all tired and starting to smell just a bit! We sorted ourselves out and went out for group dinner where they had free Apsara dancing, which is traditional Cambodian dancing. Most of it was done by the girls and a few lads too. Different dancing depicting different aspects of daily lives or particular events, like a wedding for example. We all headed back for a respectable early night as we were all pretty shattered.
Angkor Wat
Our guide Sareth had organised a tour for Angkor Wat but we all decided that we would rather just explore it ourselves, which proved to be the best option as we later found out it was a rather rushed and over involved tour hopping on and off the bus being carted around etc.
Our plan involved more sweating but but ultimately was much more enjoyable. We hired bikes out from Siem Reap and rode to Angkok Wat, this must have been about 7/8km and was another hot day.
As soon as we arrived we were surrounded by men and women, girls too, trying to sell us water and guide books, postcards....you name it, they were trying to sell it! Eventually we made it past them and headed into the main temple. This was one of the highlights of the trip for all of us and it was really impressive. Unfortunately because some people had hurt themselves on the steps going up the temple, they had been closed off so we couldn't go up. We had a wander around and its hard to imagine how these structures were built with so much precision and the detail on every wall was incredible and to such a high standard.
Ta Keo
This was the next Temple within the whole Angkor Wat 'complex'. Again very similar in style but smaller. This one we were allowed to walk up, and the steps were incredibly steep and seemed even more so on the way down.
It was really nice to be away from the rest of the group to be honest and just do our own thing, so we just took as much time as wanted and moved on. Each of the temples was a 2/3km apart as the whole area is immense. You can buy a special 3 day ticket if you are into temples and want time to see it all! When we got to the top of this temple there was a little girl trying to sell postcards and braclets, she tried every trick in the book to get me to buy some, even turning on the water works, I felt so bad for not buying some but I had already been duped into buying some postcards I didn't want when we first reached Angkor Wat.
It turns out i'm a magnet for this sort of thing and it didn't stop all day. I think my technique for getting rid of them was bad as Neil and Mark didn't really seem to have too much of a problem. All of the kids were so cute though it was hard to say no.
Ta Prohm
This was another one of the temples we definitely wanted to see as it has been made famous by the film 'Tomb Raider'. It has also been shown in many other things(can't remember what now but i know it has so you'll have to take my word for it! :)). the pictures will probably do it more justice than I can, but it was just mad how the trees have grown and become part of the stone work... roots and branches weaving their way though and ultimately breaking much of the structure itself.
Quite a lot of it had fallen down and when we arrived there was many people working on different sections to rebuild/restore it. Unfortunately the camera battery was running a little low so we couldn't get all the photos we wanted from here as we needed to save some for the sunset.
Bayon
This was another famous/popular temple as on almost every spire (and there were a lot) it had faces carved into the stone, the face was of the king at the time. This was the busiest of all the temples we had been to so far and we had been surprised at how few people there were there. It was empty but we though it would be ram packed and difficult to get some nice photos. The architecture and workmanship that had gone into everything was just immense and probably the most impressive thing about it all.
We also went to see another temple which was made just for the king, he had 234 wives and as such the swimming pool for the men was smaller than the swimming pool for the women (interesting fact 1). Time was pushing on and after bumping into the rest of our group we headed off back to Ta Keo as out of all of the temples we thought the sunset would be best seen here.
As we headed back I jokingly said last one there is a 'loser', just thinking Mark and Neil would not take the bait I didn't make any effort to speed up until I saw both of them tear past me. this proved to be a massive mistake as by the time we all made it to the temple we were sweating buckets!!! I did win though, just for the record! Forgetting we had to climb a million massive steps, we eventually made it to the top with about an hour to go before sunset. We were hoping for something spectacular, but it wasn't to be. It had been sunny all day but quite hazy and by the time sunset came round the sun disappeared behind a band of clouds. we thought it best to head back before it was pitch black and we had to navigate both the steps on the way down and the unlit, unfamiliar roads around the complex to get home. On the way back my chain came off which was a bit of a pain as I ended up covered in grease, but we did see Angkor Wat lit up and it looked amazing. The huge lights changed colour and really brought it to life. The ride back was interesting to say the least. The roads were so dark as there wasn't any street lighting, riding on the wrong side of the road took a little bit to get used to but the biggest thing was navigating the junctions. This just seemed to be a free for all, we just decided to go for it, keep our eyes peeled and we survived. This seemed to be the way everyone approached the junctions and somehow it worked, cars, mopeds, pedestrians all criss-crossing over some huge junctions and no injuries!
Angkor What?
For the evening we had planned to check out a famous bar called Angkor What? where you can get a free t-shirt if you successfully finish 2 buckets full of spirits and redbull!
Never one to back down from challenge we all stepped up. People always say its a small world and funnily enough we proved that again as the guy i was sharing a room with had been travelling round the world for 3 months and lives in Roundhay (15 min taxi ride out of Leeds city centre). Originally a Scouser he was a really funny bloke and we ended up heading out with him. As you can imagine after consuming 2 buckets worth of caffeine and alcohol we were all in a funny state, combine that with a few more beers, we definitely deserved the t-shirts. Some how I managed to end up in a kerfuffle with the so called owner of the bar! According to all the bystanders it wasn't my fault...honest!!
The next morning I was shown various pictures and video of how i was used as a human game of Buck-a-Roo after i had passed out!!! much to my amusement
No comments:
Post a Comment