Super Tuesday

Tuesday February 5th

Today was the big day to tour Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and a couple of other sites within the whole Angkor park.

It started off with me being accosted by a tuk-tuk driver about 2 seconds after leaving the hotel. He wanted me to hire him for the day for $15 to take me to the main sights. I argued with him that it would be better if I had was on my own time and got my own transport from site to site but he said it would be dearer. In fact I'd already knew this to be the case, and had heard one couple last night negotiate a day for $20, so I figured this guy was on the level and decided to hire him.

So it was off to Angkor Wat, via the ticket booth. This is impressive in itself. You are told to bring two passport photos for you ID, but no longer, webcams are everywhere, your picture is laminated straight onto the tickets. Its pretty impressive for a 3rd world country. However you soon realise that the Cambodians have had a fair amount of outside assistance at ensuring they get the best benefit from this natural resource.

As for the temples themselves, to be honest, even a week later I still can't really find the words to describe how big they are. The whole set of temples is spread over an area that is the size of a small county, you really need the tuk-tuk. I'd say we covered about 25k today, and that was the 'petit tour'.

The most amazing thing about Angkor Wat other than its size, is its layered construction. There are about 5 or 6 concentric layers, each of which is higher than the other. But whats amazing is as you go in, because each layer is so big, you sort of forget, and therefore its only when coming out that you realise how far up you went.

Disappointingly the central towers were under repair and you couldn't climb them, but there was so much to do that the 2 1/2 hours I spent there wasn't really enough, but there was so much more to do I had to press on.

To Angkor Thom. If Angkor Wat impressed with its size, Angkor Thom is so big, you can't really think of it as a single ruin. It is a square city 3km by 3km. You drive into it through the gates, and its still about 5 minutes before you reach the main drop off point. There are a load of different ruins in it, but all part of one complex. The most famous of these is the Bayoun with its many heads, but the palace, and the elephant terrace were particular favourites of mine. Its an amazing place, not least because at one point 1 million people lived there, when Europe had no cities half that size. And yet only a few temples, and part of the palace, survived the jungle. No ordinary houses survived.

And still there was more to come. On we went to Ta Phrom, a temple that really is in the jungle (as opposed to Angkor Wat, which by being on an island seems to have suvived the ravages of jungle takeover a lot better). This temple is amazing because of the way in which the tress grow in between, on top of, and around the ruins. It is famous because some scenes of Tomb Raider were shot there (Angelina Jolie is a bit star in Cambodia, every other bar, restaurant and hotel claims she was a customer at some point).

Best I can do to try to convey the day is to post photos. This will give some idea of the size of the place, and the imact of the jungle, but the one thing you won't get is the background jungle noise, which make these ruins unlike others.

On the way back we were involved in a crash, sort of. As we were turning right into the hotel (across traffic, they drive on the right over here) a motorbike swerved to avoid us and went over. We didn't stop, and I didn't ask the driver should he have. He knows the rules of the road. In Ireland it was definitely leaving the scene of an accident (as we were the cause of the swerve).
Finished the evening off in the bar talking to an English/Slovakian couple who were doing Siem Reap as a single day visit. I'm not sure how you would do it in a day.