Well I'll be honest, this trip I've never actually done the temple thing, I've steered pretty well clear of them all together. Apart from the few times a guide snuck one into a tour, I really didn't see any. But Angkor rocked, unlike any thing I've seen before. It's huge ancient and powerful. I can now imagine how Nicky felt as the clouds parted high up in the Andes to see the wonders of Machu Picchu. I had left Roy the day before in Phenom Penh as I was going to rush through in the plan of meeting Julia Goulia in Bangkok on the 13th, he was going to head to the beach at Sihanoukville. I booked a moto driver for the day, and at 5am met him out side my hotel. $US10 for a moto driver sunrise til sunset seemed like a good idea and $US20 to get into Angkor seemed steep but well worth it. I got to Angkor Wat about quarter past, unluckily the stars had faded and the sky was beginning to get light.
I spent the first few minutes taking photos of the lines of paparazzi style tourists (my old camera managed to take photos in between intermittent weird beeping and turning its self off). Think sidelines of the grand prix, with a line of zoom lenses on tripods. I found a nice spot off to the side and sat while the sun came up. Unfortunately not an amazing sunrise but, still good to arrive in near darkness and see it all appear in front of you. There was a pretty solid stream of people heading in, I grabbed my iPod, chucked on 1 Giant Leap, and proceeded up the stairs. Angkor Wat is pretty huge, fucking old and made of a shit load of stone. It's weird to sit there and just think how big every one of those bricks are. How heavy they all are, and how far they were lugged to be stacked up. Nearly every single one was intricately carved. There are hundreds of Buddha carvings and massive scenes depicting king's life stories and huge battles.
I found a nice little spot, wrote a post card to George st. and enjoyed watching, listening, and soaking it all in. I managed to spend about 3 or 4 hours there, including a full hour in a nice spot over looking the main entrance where I listened to Stay Human start to finish. There was loads of reminiscing, thinking about the past and future, a very nice little bit of Zen time.
Next was Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom, It has over 200 massive carved faces, it was impressively cool but it was getting crowded and quite hot. After lunch and a nice long snooze in the restaurant's hammock, we cruised to the very famous Ta Prohm. Film set of Tomb Raider, cover photo of the Lonely Planet a beautiful temple superbly engulfed by the surrounding jungle. It was very photogenic, I had a local show me through and point out the good spots. With the day nearly over I made it up to Phnom Bakheng, a crowded smallish temple on top of a biggish hill to watch the sunset. The walk was fairly steep, but quite entertaining watching the package tour fat bastards struggle up getting way out of their comfort zone.
Click here to watch a slide show of the photos…. Most are pretty cool, it was a very very cool day.
Cheers
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Http://www.WillCowan.com
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