Cambodia - Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

The flight to Siem Reap went off without a hitch, and we found ourselves in a comfy tuk-tuk that felt more like an old-fashioned horse-drawn buggy (minus horses) owing to the padded seats, high roof and acres of space, being assured earnestly by our driver that the hostel we were heading to had no windows. None of the rooms had any windows at all, which was very bad, and it was a very bad hotel, so wouldn’t we rather go somewhere else? Funnily enough, Jess and Freek were staying there and hadn’t mentioned the windowlessness of the very bad hotel, so we decided to chance it. Sadly they were full, and John sat in the shade of a Frenchy-looking café having an ice-cold coke while I schlepped round town in 35 degree heat looking for a guesthouse. The café was somewhat of a cliché, a long bar with all the doors open to show the dusty but sunny interior, big creaky ceiling fans, little round pavement tables …you get the picture – we certainly got it after a day there because that’s what every bar, restaurant, café, bistro and hotel looked like. The Americans were wetting themselves). There seemed to be a certain consensus among the hotels and hostels, whereby an AC room cost $15, no more, no less. I finally settled on an old building on the corner of a busy street, near the market, one over from ‘Bar Street,’ with a bar and pool table downstairs. It was Frenchy-looking…dark, with black and white tiled floors, high ceiling, high narrow bed, dark green-painted shutters, heavy wardrobe and a little balcony (no, we didn’t go out on it, it was older than Job)…yada yada yada. Took John over there to have a look and as I was slowly melting we bumped into Freek and Jess, on their way for a cycle around the nearby countryside. We made dinner plans and then crashed out.

Food in that plastic town was not cheap, and the relentless tuk-tuk drivers yelling at us wore a bit, but the next day we decided to be all energetic and independent and hired two bicycles to go to Angkor Wat. On the way I discovered that my bike only had two gears, 1 and 20, which was not very useful. John discovered that there was a reason he had not ridden a bike for thirty years, and it was called puberty. So, after we paid the $2.4 million to get into the park for three days, we struggled sweatily around the 20km ‘short’ tour. ‘A great way to experience the beauty of Angkor Wat’? I say to that, my arse. My. Arse. We cursed and spat (and dribbled and sweated and probably foamed at the mouth, bug-eyed with our hair plastered to our shiny red faces – although apparently mine was purple, thank you darling) at the fresh, breeze-cooled folk in their luxurious tuk-tuks and vowed darkly to get one for the next day.
Oh, and did I mention the cycling was my idea? I ought to admit that.

Angkor Wat was pretty impressive, though I would prefer not to be charged the GNP of a small Asian country to enter it. But they do put the money to use maintaining the site, which covers many square kilometres (ok, no, I can’t remember exactly ‘how’ many, and if you’re so keen to know, you bloody well google it) and is all manicured lawns and little wooden fences, carparks and ice cream vans. The temple complexes themselves range from enormous and fairly well-preserved to tiny and unrecognizable lumps of stone. The second, tuk-tuk driven day was fantastic, and we did the longer tour to include some of the further-away stuff as well as sunset from the top of a hill in the park (too cloudy, every man and his dog there being loud and taking pictures of a cloudy sky with no visible sunset, so we left after 20 mins) but it is fair to say that after that we were all templed out. It was farewell to Jess and Freek after that, who headed to Vietnam, while we set off for Ko Chang in Thailand.