After a long day of traveling and flight delays, we finally landed in Siem Reap around 9 pm. We got through immigration and stepped outside where our driver was sitting cross-legged on the ground waiting for us. He took my suitcase and showed us to our tuk tuk, and off we went, through the refreshingly calm streets of Siem Reap.
We arrived at our little boutique hotel at about 10 pm, met with a cold towel and delicious fruit drink. We were shown to our room which was amazing.
The best part is that we take one step outside our door to our patio, and then another step and we are right in the beautiful pool.
Other than the rooms, the hotel is all open air, and it’s lovely. Gardens everywhere, lizards and frogs entertaining us during meal times.
I wasted no time in getting to bed though, as we had to wake up at 4 am for our sunrise tour at Angkor Wat! The ticket booth was already crowded when we got there at 5 am, but our guide got us through quickly, and we got a front row seat to view Angkor Wat at sunrise from outside the gate. It was a little bit far away, and it was cloudy so we didn’t get a colorful sunrise, but it was still beautiful and peaceful, listening to the jungle come alive as the towers of Angkor Wat became more and more visible.
Once we had our fill, our guide took us back to the hotel for breakfast, and then back we went to Angkor Archaeological Park to visit the temples. We stopped outside the east gate of Angkor Wat to get some history before I started snapping away with my camera. And then we were walking in, already impressed just by the gate.
Angkor Wat is beyond impressive, the largest religious monument in the world, built in the early 12th century. It was originally a Hindu temple, dedicated to the god Vishnu, but was then transformed toward the end of the century into a Buddhist temple. You can see characteristics of both religions throughout.
Our tour guide was fabulous about pointing out the different carvings and decor and giving us the stories behind them. Such intricate details everywhere we looked.
We got to go up to the top of the temple for views around.
Once we made it through, we could see the huge crowds of people coming from the west gate. What’s amazing is that we are here in low season – our guide said there are 3 times as many people in high season.
Once we got outside of the temple, there were a couple monkeys lounging around, calmly taking in the vast numbers of people walking by and snapping pictures of them. They’re smart monkeys; they know tourists will feed them.
We took in some more beautiful views from the west before hopping in our car to move on to another part of the park.
Next up was the old capital city of Angkor Thom. We were met by monkeys playing on tops of pagodas, and elephants giving rides to tourists, which of course made me sad.
Several temples make up Angkor Thom, the most popular of which is the Bayon.
The Bayon is the temple of smiling faces.
The faces and the doorways provided ample photo opportunities, though there was always the give and take of waiting for everyone else to take their own pictures and then them waiting for us to take ours.
We visited a couple other temples in Angkor Thom, including Baphuon and who knows what else.
We got away from the other tourists a bit by driving a little bit to one of the gates.
Our last visit before lunch was Ta Nei, possibly my favorite temple of the day. Certainly not as “impressive” as the bigger temples, but it was so unique and no one else was there.
It was never completely finished, and much of what was there had been destroyed. Trees were growing on top and within it.
We had a tasty lunch at a restaurant in the park and then drove over to the entrance of Ta Prohm, which has gained a lot of popularity as the “Tomb Raider temple”.
The temple is truly beautiful, similar to Ta Nei though bigger with more going on.
Unfortunately, it was packed with tourists and so was hard to navigate and get the pictures we wanted.
The sun was coming out, so it was getting awfully hot, but that was our last temple of the day, so we climbed back in the car, our driver passing over our ice cold lemon water infused towels, and water bottles. We got pretty spoiled to having the guide and the driver. My sore legs much appreciated the limited amount of walking we had, and Anthony was pleased to have the occasional A/C and cold towels :).
We enjoyed our pool outside our door once we arrived back at the hotel.
Completely exhausted but not wanting to nap and screw up our sleep schedule again, we just took it easy, hanging out at the hotel and eating dinner there. I swear we had the whole place to ourselves… other than the critters.
So far, I’m loving Cambodia.