Angkor day 3

We purchased a three day pass to Angkor Archaeological Park and we had one final day with Socheat exploring the area. We decided to head a bit further out of Siem Reap (about 25 km) and check out Kbal Spean and Banteay Srei. Kbal Spean was said to have a nice waterfall and is also known as the river of a thousand lingas.

It took just under an hour to get out to Kbal Speen via tuk-tuk, but the drive through the countryside was nice. Once we arrived there was a 1.5km walk up to the river and waterfall. Compared to other walks we've done it wasn't bad, but it was still mostly uphill and pretty hot and humid.

Lingas are a hindu phallic symbol (for more accurate info: here).  Really there were just round half spheres carved in the rock.  A guy with an official looking uniform (could have been a park ranger) pointed out some more carvings and took us on a little tour of the river.  He pointed out some carvings we wouldn't have noticed without his help.

The waterfall wasn't anything spectacular, but there were quite a few Cambodians at the river and waterfall picnicking and cooling off. Just as I was about to take a few photos of the waterfall a guy walked up to the waterfall to cool off. I motioned to him asking if it was ok to take his photo and he very enthusiastically nodded and then posed several different ways. When I was done I thanked him and he once again, very enthusiastically, thanked me back.

After the river we headed to Banteay Srei. It was surprisingly crowded for being so far away from the main Angkor temples (a lot of organized tours go to this temple). It was a cool small temple that was the most intricately carved of any of the Angkor temples and is made of red sandstone. The thing that strikes me the most when seeing all of these enormous temples and intricate carvings is that all of these things were built and carved by actual, real life, people.

On the way home we stopped at Angkor Wat to see it in the daytime.  Even though it was raining, we spent an hour walking around the temple to see things we had missed last time. Back at the hostel we invited Fiona, an irish girl staying in our room, to dinner with us.  She invited another girl, and the four of us headed to "downtown" to eat.  We sat at a food stall on pub street and ate and chatted.  Afterwards we headed to the Angkor night market, which was much better than the night market we went to the night before.

Us with Socheat, our trusty tuk-tuk driver for three days

Angkor Wat sunrise

We knew before arriving in Cambodia that Angkor Wat is a must see, but we didn't realize that it is a popular sunrise location.  Everyone we met said that sunrise is amazing, you must see it at Angkor Wat.  And so we did.

We woke up at 4:15 AM, met Socheat downstairs at 4:30 and were off. The only time you may be cold in Cambodia is riding in a tuk-tuk at 4:30 in the morning.  We arrived at Angkor Wat in complete darkness and realized we should have brought a flashlight. We followed a couple people who were smarter than us in that regard to a little pond in front of Angkor Wat.  Over the hour and a half we stood there before sunrise, the number of people increased from around 10 to over a hundred all standing in the dark awaiting sunrise.

Sunrise was very pretty and had the added benefit of hiding the huge green tarps of construction in the shadow of Angkor Wat.  Before the sun was fully up we went into Angkor Wat and had it mostly to ourselves.  We explored until about 6:30 then Socheat took us to Preah Khan.

Still Angkor Wat

Since it was only 7:15 by the time we reached Preah Khan, we were the only tourists visiting and only one hawker was getting set up for the day.  There is a decent walk from the gates to the main temple through the woods.  It was peaceful and cool and lovely to walk through.  This temple hasn't been as restored as some of the others which was awesome.

A huge spider the size of Andy's hand

We left the second temple around 8:30 to go back to our hostel and have breakfast and a nap. Lunch was at the Singing Tree Cafe which supports local charities in Cambodia (Lonely Planet suggested it).  We wandered through Siem Reap for a bit.  The town is small and all the stores and restaurants are geared towards tourists, so it didn't have a very authentic feel to it.  Headed back to our hostel where we lazied around the hostel until bed time.

The Kingdom of Cambodia

We decided to bite the bullet and spring for a flight to Siem Reap rather than deal with the land border crossing. Our flight left Bangkok in the early evening and as we made our way east we could have just as easily been flying over the ocean than any sort of landmass. Once it got dark there were hardly any lights and I could see lightning to the south. We arrived in Siem Reap to a steady rain shower, paid $20 each for our visa-on-arrival and headed outside to look for the pickup our hostel had arranged. Standing there in the rain with the biggest smile holding a sign that read "Welcome to Siem Reap Hostel Andrew Bourassa" stood our tuk-tuk driver, Socheat. He ran over to the parking area, pulled his tuk-tuk to the curb, helped us load our bags and off we went.

Once we arrived at the hostel Socheat wrote his name and number on one of the hostel business cards and told us that if we wanted to go anywhere the next day he could take us.

The next morning we woke up relatively late and had breakfast at the hostel (pancakes with banana creme and syrup for both of us). We went to the lobby and asked them to call Socheat and he came running up to the hostel entrance and asked us what we wanted to do. We didn't have much of an idea of what we wanted to do, all we knew was that there were a ton of temples to see and that we should see some of them.  Socheat came up with an itinerary and took us to Banteay Kdei first.

Banteay Kdei has a long walkway up to the temple lined with people (mostly kids) trying to sell you stuff (bracelets, books, postcards). Once we got into the temple it was very quiet and peaceful with very few tourists.  By far the quietest temple and Katie's favorite.

Next up: Ta Prohm (Tomb Raider temple).  This was a temple we had heard we must go to, but when we arrived there was construction going on in the center buildings.  This meant that not only could we not explore the center temple but there was a ton of construction noise.  Not peaceful at all.  We got stuck in a downpour under a little bamboo sign for 20 minutes before heading back to the tuk tuk.

Ta Keo is a tiny temple we stopped at for just a few minutes.  There were hardly any tourists but there was also not much to see.

The last temple complex we visited was Angkor Thom which was once a huge city (about 10 square km).  At this point we were pretty exhausted and getting a little templed out.  We were dropped off at Bayon which was really surreal with all the faces.  Unlike any other temple in Angkor.  We walked down the road to meet out tuk tuk driver, passing by Baphoun, Elephant terrace and other things that we just couldn't muster the energy to spending a lot of time on.