Siem Reap and Angkor
10/29/2006-11/1/2006
We left Phnom Penh on the 29th for a 4 to 5 hour van ride to a town called Siem Reap, which is essentially a place for tourists to stay in and eat while they are visiting Angkor (located about 6 km north of Siem Reap). The town itself is not terribly exciting, but it has a lot of good restaurants. I found a funny picture in the bathroom of one of them (see below).
In order to get to Angkor from Siem Reap and to get around the temples of Angkor (they're pretty spread out), we hired a group of tuk-tuk drivers for the next 4 days. Each of us partnered up and found a driver. Here is a picture of our group of tuk-tuks.
After getting photo ID passes to visit Angkor, we went to Angkor Wat for the sunset. Angkor Wat is the most spectacular of the temples and also one of the most well maintained (considering it was built in the 12th century) as you can see in the pictures that follow. This picture is of the outer gate of Angkor Wat, which is surrounded by a huge moat.
After passing through the entrance, you can see the incredible structure in this picture.
This is a picture of the sunset from the second or third level of Angkor Wat. You may have to adjust the brightness of your monitor to be able to see it well.
The next day we visited Angkor Wat at sunrise and explored it much more thoroughly. The following picture is of the temple and its reflection in one of the surrounding pools.
The outer walls of the lower level of Angkor Wat consist almost entirely of bas-reliefs, which are massive, detailed engravings of religious stories (it was originally a Hindu temple). Here is a close-up of one of them, but these detailed engravings spanned the entire length of the walls.
Here is a shot of one of the towers.
It was a pretty steep climb up, and the following sign was at the bottom. In America you probably wouldn't even be able to climb these stairs. There would be a new set of stairs, an escalator, or maybe even an elevator built.
I even saw a few monkeys climbing on some of the roofs of Angkor Wat (see below). In addition, while I was leaving the temple, there was a monkey on the long walkway. A man had a banana in his hands, and the monkey walked up and stared at him. The man wisely through the banana, and the monkey went over and ate it immediately. It was pretty funny.
During the next 3 days, we just went around to the various temples exploring. We basically spent the morning before breakfast (from about 5 am to 9 am) and the afternoon (from about 2:30 pm to sunset around 6:00 pm) tuk-tuking to and from Angkor and checking out the temples. Some of the temples were more impressive than others, and I got a bit bored at times. However, once I thought about the fact that these temples were built as many as 1000 years ago, I remembered to be amazed.
While Angkor Wat was incredible well preserved, some of the temples were falling apart and even being reclaimed by the surrounding forest. This can be seen by the trees growing attached to the stones of the temples. This was particularly apparent in the temple Ta Prohm, which is what most of the following pictures are taken from. Here you can see some of the destruction of the temples.
The following pictures show the trees growing out of the buildings. This was definitely my favorite part of Angkor.
Here are a couple of pictures of another temple at sunset.
We visited various other temples, but I was an idiot and tried to clean my lens with lens cleaner, which you're not supposed to do with my camera. It resulted in all my pictures being hazy, which can be seen in the following pictures of a neat little temple that was kind of a miniature temple with small, 5 foot high doors.
I thought that I had permanently screwed up my camera and that I would have to get it fixed when I returned to the US, but fortunately after about 5 days I tried it again and it seemed to be working well. Thus, don't despair. There are more pictures to come when my blog goes to Bangkok.
We left Phnom Penh on the 29th for a 4 to 5 hour van ride to a town called Siem Reap, which is essentially a place for tourists to stay in and eat while they are visiting Angkor (located about 6 km north of Siem Reap). The town itself is not terribly exciting, but it has a lot of good restaurants. I found a funny picture in the bathroom of one of them (see below).
In order to get to Angkor from Siem Reap and to get around the temples of Angkor (they're pretty spread out), we hired a group of tuk-tuk drivers for the next 4 days. Each of us partnered up and found a driver. Here is a picture of our group of tuk-tuks.
After getting photo ID passes to visit Angkor, we went to Angkor Wat for the sunset. Angkor Wat is the most spectacular of the temples and also one of the most well maintained (considering it was built in the 12th century) as you can see in the pictures that follow. This picture is of the outer gate of Angkor Wat, which is surrounded by a huge moat.
After passing through the entrance, you can see the incredible structure in this picture.
This is a picture of the sunset from the second or third level of Angkor Wat. You may have to adjust the brightness of your monitor to be able to see it well.
The next day we visited Angkor Wat at sunrise and explored it much more thoroughly. The following picture is of the temple and its reflection in one of the surrounding pools.
The outer walls of the lower level of Angkor Wat consist almost entirely of bas-reliefs, which are massive, detailed engravings of religious stories (it was originally a Hindu temple). Here is a close-up of one of them, but these detailed engravings spanned the entire length of the walls.
Here is a shot of one of the towers.
It was a pretty steep climb up, and the following sign was at the bottom. In America you probably wouldn't even be able to climb these stairs. There would be a new set of stairs, an escalator, or maybe even an elevator built.
I even saw a few monkeys climbing on some of the roofs of Angkor Wat (see below). In addition, while I was leaving the temple, there was a monkey on the long walkway. A man had a banana in his hands, and the monkey walked up and stared at him. The man wisely through the banana, and the monkey went over and ate it immediately. It was pretty funny.
During the next 3 days, we just went around to the various temples exploring. We basically spent the morning before breakfast (from about 5 am to 9 am) and the afternoon (from about 2:30 pm to sunset around 6:00 pm) tuk-tuking to and from Angkor and checking out the temples. Some of the temples were more impressive than others, and I got a bit bored at times. However, once I thought about the fact that these temples were built as many as 1000 years ago, I remembered to be amazed.
While Angkor Wat was incredible well preserved, some of the temples were falling apart and even being reclaimed by the surrounding forest. This can be seen by the trees growing attached to the stones of the temples. This was particularly apparent in the temple Ta Prohm, which is what most of the following pictures are taken from. Here you can see some of the destruction of the temples.
The following pictures show the trees growing out of the buildings. This was definitely my favorite part of Angkor.
Here are a couple of pictures of another temple at sunset.
We visited various other temples, but I was an idiot and tried to clean my lens with lens cleaner, which you're not supposed to do with my camera. It resulted in all my pictures being hazy, which can be seen in the following pictures of a neat little temple that was kind of a miniature temple with small, 5 foot high doors.
I thought that I had permanently screwed up my camera and that I would have to get it fixed when I returned to the US, but fortunately after about 5 days I tried it again and it seemed to be working well. Thus, don't despair. There are more pictures to come when my blog goes to Bangkok.
posted by Nathan O'Brien at
12:00 AM
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