Angor Wat – The home of ancient Angor kings

So after taking the quick decision about going straight from Vang Vieng to Siem Riep, Campodia, it was quite an adventure to find good connections through out two whole countries. Leaving from Vang Vieng, my route was as follow; Vientiane, Pakse, (Campodian border), Phnom Penh and finally Siem Riep. 

In Vientiane I spent one day from morning to evening 7pm. There wasn’t that much to see. The city itself was well developed compared to the other parts of the country but at least I couldn’t find anything eye catching when wandering around. In the evening it was time for a night bus from Vientiane to Pakse. The night bus was definitely the most comfortable transportation mean for me so far. There were actual sleeping bunches for everyone in the bus, although these were measured in the Asian style and my 1,7m was already on the far end to sleeping comfortably there. But anyway, for me this worked out extremely nicely. The bus was in Pakse the following morning. From there I took a mini-van to the Campodian border. Visa was 30 US dollars when bought from the boarder (if I have bought it from the embassy in Vientiane it would have been only 20 US but since I didn’t have time in Vientiane to find an embassy I decided to buy mine from the boarder). Strangely, there was no need for bribes in the boarder unlike almost every single traveler I have met has told me when they have crossed the boarder. Maybe they have done it in some other check-point… 

After crossing the boarder it was time to find my bus to take me to Siem Riep via Phnom Penh. This driving took again around 10 hours. To be honest, I don’t even want to count how much time I have spent transportation systems during this trip.

So after lovely 32 h of travelling in total I arrived finally to Siem Riep at 1 AM. Since I also hadn’t book a hotel advance, I just asked the taxi driver to take me some place where there is space for sure. He drove me to a nice-ish 8 US dollars per night hotel about 2 km from centrum. I was just happy what I got and probably still payed over-price. The hotel was nice and cool to sleep and had warm water for shower so it was enough for me for the first night. 

The first full day I found another place to stay in the city. Price: 2 US Dollars per night. Okay, not the most cleanest place, but I got my own room and since I planned to stay only 2 nights it was okay for me. During that day I wandered around the Siem Riep but to be honest there’s not that much to see. It was clear that the Angor Wat is the main thing in whole town and the actual town has just developed around the Angor Wat tourist business. But during this day I found my Tuk-tuk driver for the next day. I think I did a good deal with him by paying him 12 US dollars for driving me around the Angor Wat on the following morning. The price was similar what I had heard from other travelers.

So the next morning my alarm clock woke me up at 4:15 AM. The Tuk-tuk driver e to pick me up at 4:45 AM from my hotel and so did our journey to Angor Wat began to see the sunrise.

The travel from Siem Riep to Angor Wat is only 7 km so there were also lots of tourists cycling there. One day ticket to the ruins cost 20 US dollars and 3-day pass would have been 40 US. Since I was visiting there only that one day I took the 20 US dollars pass. For the pass they took my pictue and I had to show the ticket there basically every single place I wanted to walk around.

                                   My personalised ticket to Angor Wat

But this was it; one of the places to visit I had expected the most. When we arrived to the temple area it was still totally dark. The tuk-tuk driver let me out in front of the entrance to the main temple and told me where he would be waiting for me to go to the next temple. I didn’t want to go inside the temple yet but waited in front of the bridge to see the sunrise. The feeling when the light started to increase and the light shades of temple reveal was quite magical moment. Here are some pics how it went.

                                     Above: Main temple on sunrise

                                        Bridge to the main templa

                                          Lions and Naga-snakes quarding the temple

                                              Inside the main temple

                                                 Second temple I went

In total the temple area is HUGE, perimeter of around 7 km. Yesterday I talked with my tuk-tuk driver about what do I want to see. I decided I was happy with the Main temple and the Tree temple but tuk-tuk driver told me that my deal includes 5 temples so I let him to take to the three other temples. The three temple was on my to-do –list since I have seen quite some movies which have been filmed there (such as part of Indiana Jones). Here are more pics from the rest of the day.

The round tour in the area took the whole day and when I got back to hotel at 3 PM I was totally exhausted. Taking power nap and then wandering a bit in the night market I made the decision for the rest of my travel. Instead of going to Phnom Penh and Sibanoukhville for longer time I decided to skip the rest of the Campodie and head to Koh Chang (=Elephant island) beaches in Thailand. More about that on my next post.