Siem Reap - Temple Run

We mentioned yesterday that we had an early start planned for today. The alarms sounded at 3.45am! We were being picked up for the Angkor Wat Sunrise tour at 4.30am. Vuthy or Mr T as he suggested we call him was our tour guide. A 35 year old Cambodia man with an awesome knowledge of the history of the temples and of Cambodia. He was also very entertaining throughout the tour with a fun sense of humour. We were the Mr T family. We would often hear him call "come on T family chop chop" as he kept us moving through the large temple complexes. We started with a long walk from the bus in the dark barely able to make out the outline of the temple buildings and towers. In fact what looked like massive trees slowly emerged as temple towers. We had a front row spot to watch the sunrise and the changing colours of the Angkor Wat temple in the reflection pond out front of it. We stood and watched the light change for at least an hour. An amazing experience. We then followed Mr T through the Angkor Wat complex which is the biggest Buddhist temple by area in the world. However, it was started as a Hindu temple and has changed to Buddhist and back again over the centuries. It was originally constructed in the early 1,100s and completed in 1,150 shortly after the Kings death.

After a few hours of watching the sunrise and wandering around the temple we hopped back on the bus to exit via the South gate. Next stop was the Ta Prohm temple which was used in the movie Tomb Raider. It's the temple you see in pictures with large trees and tree root balls growing through the temple. The highlight though was possibly the echo chamber. It was a small stone enclosure where if you stand in the right spot and lightly thump your chest you can here it echo through the chamber.

We spent around an hour at Ta Prohm before heading to a local restaurant for breakfast. We had coffee (Aaron) and a mango shake (Sarah) as well as sharing Lok Lak Shaking Beef and Yellow Noodles with Egg. Both were very tasty, sorry forgot to take a photo. Breakfast cost USD $17.50 approximately $30 NZD - not very cheap but worth the money when it's after 9am and you've been up since before 4am!

Next stop was Ta Nei, a much smaller temple, set amongst the forest and only partially restored. This is how the other bigger temples were until they were discovered and restored, mainly by the French, from around 1860. Interestingly Siem Reap means Siam or Thai Defeated. The Thai (Siamese) invaded Cambodia many years ago and the temples were abandoned. With the help of Vietnam the Khmer (Cambodian) people eventually took back Cambodia and defeated the Thai. This was way way before Pol Pot took power and killed 2 million of his own people. Mr T told us of how his grand parents survived the genocide of the 1970s by pretending to be non educated pheasants. But in fact they had previously been teachers.

The last temple stop of the day was called Bayon within the city of Angkor Thom. This physical temple complex is even larger than the famous Angkor Wat but it is slightly newer and the temple building is smaller. It is a more pretty temple with more towers and clearly visible faces on the towers. There are many temples within the complex. We had to pre purchase a ticket last night to allow access to the 4 places we visited today. The ticket allows you to visit 9 other temples and lasts up to 3 days. We hope to visit some of the others in the next two days. The tickets cost USD $62 per person.

Our tour group had 10 other people on it and we were the oldest. The others were from a mixture of USA, Australia, Alaska, Germany, Hawaii, and Italy. We were the only Kiwi's. Around 1pm we were dropped back at our hotel. It's time to chill out, write up our diaries, have some coffee and do some reading. A great morning which I'm sure will remain a top highlight as the trip progresses. It will be very hard to beat.