A day in the park will temple you out, but this place was just amazing, and we had a fabulous time. We only took a mini tour, visiting the three most well known temples ($12 for the tuk tuk driver, $25 for the guide). You absolutely must have a guide the first time you go. It’s very interesting hearing all the stories and facts around the different temples, as well as just talking to them about life in Cambodia in general. The driver is optional, though you do need a way to get around the park since its quite large and the temples are far from each other. Some people bike, and tour groups will bus or van.
We started the day early, heading out around 8 am to beat the crowd trying to get in. It was a lovely ride there, and along the way our guide, Mr. Borang, pointed out the Siem Reap river (only one going throught the city, and man made) as well as the gardens and two most expensive hotels in town.
At the entrance to the park, we hopped off to pick up tickets. Entrance is $20 a person, and you get your own personal ID badge paper thing. They print it with your picture because apparently there used to be a problem of people buying multi day tickets and passing them off to their friends. There are officers who check your badge as you enter the park, and then at every temple entrance.
Angkor Wat was first. This is probably the most well known out of all the temples. There are three levels as well as an outer wall (most temples have a wall since the bigger temples also had residents within the walls) and 2 libraries leading up to the temple (with more inside. They came in pairs). This is one of the only temples to face the West, which is considered odd because the West represents death (since it is where the sun sets). I won’t go into too much detail about everything we learned from the guide, but it was a huge structure and took us about 2 hours to get through.
The walls and paths are framed with the snakes (head on one end, tail on the other), which comes from an old Hindu story. The first level of the temple has carvings along the walls that tell of Rama and the story of his wife who was kidnapped by demons (the same story at the Grand Palace in Bangkok). There is also a mural of the three levels to hell or heaven, and other carvings of life at Angkor. Angkor Wat was built as a Hindu temple (with a Buddha at the top level) so there are a lot of depictions of struggles between kings, gods, and demons. Monkeys play a prevalent role in many of these stories, and one of them is the equivalent of the Chinese Monkey King.
A lot of the original red and gold paint has faded from the walls, partly from age and normal wear and tear, but also from visitors stupidly touching the walls, which causes the oil from their fingers to break down the paint. In fact this seems to be a common theme, considering the numerous fat Asian tourists we saw just casually leaning against wall carvings and touching everything around them (yes John, fat Asians exist).
The second level is more just a path to continue onto the third level. The one interesting thing here was the hallways of headless statues, where people broke off the heads to steal (easier than the entire thing I guess). We pulled on some long pants and cove ups here since the third level has a Buddha and is thus strict about wearing respectful clothing.
We went up to the highest level and enjoyed the view. The stairs were quite steep and it was probably the best workout I’ve had so far (aside from the temple of dawn). After a quick circle, we headed down (people took forever creeping down the stairs. They weren’t that bad…) and out to grab some drinks and meet our driver.
It was starting to get really hot (not that it wasn’t hot before, it just got even hotter), so we decided to hit up Ta Prohm next, which is known as the Jungle temple. This one is most famous for being in the opening scene of Tomb Raider, but it’s also just really cool because of the trees that grow around it. These trees grow up and down, with their roots exposed. These roots snake across the walls of the temple, some to the point where they need to be supported by metal beams because their weight has knocked down parts of the temple. It’s a gorgeous place, with the plus of not being too hot, and we got to climb around a bit and walk under a tree. The carvings on the wall here are about life in the city, and include the Chinese people who migrated there. The story goes that for the first two years, The people were forgiving of the Chinese for having their own culture, but after awhile the govenrnment started forbidding certain things, saying that these immigrants had plenty of time to acclimate to their culture and should now live by their rules.
After the second temple, it was time for lunch. We had smoothies and fried serpent fish, which kinda looks like a snake but is actually a fish. It was delicious and we had to be careful not to stuff ourselves into food coma since we had a third temple to hit up.
The last temple was Angkor Tom, which is known for its faces. There are smiling (and laughin and serious) Buddhas on all the walls and towers of the temple. Some of the insides of the pillars smell of bat dung though, which is actually a problem because when the rain comes, the resulting mixture eats at at the stone. There are several levels in this temple as well, and we climbed up and down, looking at all the faces, and enjoying the view.
By this time in the afternoon, we were all templed out, so we headed back and crashed.
Nighttime was a little excursion to search for food and shopping. We headed to the Old Town area to eat at Khmer Kitchen (chain of local Cambodian food, quite delicious) then began on our shopping excursion. There is a regular night market right behind Pub Street as well as an Artist’s Night Market (though they’re both really just the same thing). We started with the regular night market before taking a stroll down Pub Street. Here, it’s more just a lane of chill places to drink and eat, not just drink and party. There’s music and clubs, but its so much cleaner and nicer than Khao San and much more laid back drinking, not crazy partway drunkenness. There are also a lot of massage and fish spa booths, and we passed by quite a few tourists squealing at the fishes nibbling at their toesies.
We hopped by the artist night market after, picked up a dragon fruit smoothie, and slowly made our way back to the hostel to pack up for a long day of travel the next day.