Now Cambodia is another country sandwiched between Thailand and Vietnam that most people don’t go to just for travel purposes. It’s a country that is usually added into the itinerary along with Thailand or Vietnam or both. But yes one attraction that draws anyone and everyone into this little friendly country is the Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious structure, located in Siem Reap. Siem Reap which is hardly a few hours by land/train from Thailand/Vietnam or Laos and also a very short 1-2hrs flight from any of these countries.
I arrived into Siem Reap from Bangkok’s DMK and what a contrasting difference in size it was between the two airports. Bangkok being such a huge international destination and transit hub obviously has a massive airport, where as Siem Reap’s International Airport gives a quaint feeling and feels a lot more warm & receptive. The town centre where my backpacker was located was about 20mins by Tuktuk and it was nice ride through the city outskirts and everyone saw me with amusement as I shot some videos from the tuktuk.
The temple complex of Angkor Wat was about 7kms from the town centre. After spending the first couple of days in Siem Reap and having researched around a bit I decided to hire a bicycle to ride around as well as go to Angkor Wat. It was during my research that I found out the complex of Angkor Wat is spread across 400 acres of land with about 70+ main temples within. From a tourism perspective, the complex has two circuits, small & grand, provides a route plan to visit some of the most prominent sites within the complex.
Image Source: JohnnyAfrica.com
One of the evenings I had purchased the complex entry ticket which costs a whopping US$62 per person for a day. There were also weekly and monthly passes available to those who were keen to take their own time to explore all the sites in the complex. I’m not that much of a temple/history sort of person; I knew I’d get saturated within a day (or even lesser in this case) and hence a one day ticket was more than enough for me.
The day of visiting the world famous Angkor Wat, kicked off with me losing the key for the bicycle lock and after a good amount of searching, asking & wasting time around I had to get the lock broken only to find the key later under my pillow (though I had already looked for it there). I wanted to go to the site before sunrise but reached there around 9am after a quick breakfast and a fast but pleasant cycle ride. Once you the leave the city premises and enter the temple complex area it feels like a different country altogether. Though the city is absolutely neat, clean & green the complex feels a lot more natural, lot more quieter and the vibrance just provides all the soothing you need.
About 30-40mins of biking (including pit stops) I reached the Angkor Wat. Had to quickly put on a trouser as shorts weren’t allowed, before I could walk in. Before reaching there I had to cross a check point where the security folks check your passport and the ticket to make sure no one is rigging the system. Now Angkor Wat itself is a pretty huge structure with it’s boundary walls and a couple of lakes within its premises. As I made my way into the temple, to my surprise however, the stone sculpting and carvings were nowhere close to what I had in my mind. I mean, whatever was there, was still very beautiful but to my eyes it just looked like a stone building (with a little bit of history & religious aspect to it) but nothing extraordinary.
I spent a good couple of hours at the Angkor Wat temple and from there I rode another 7kms (one way) to the Ta Prohm temple popularly known as the Tombraider Temple. This was a little more interesting cuz of the aesthetics onsite that included a lot of trees growing through the temple ruins, making it a more visually appealing than the other temples. Although it was in ruins, the stone work was still no match to what we find in India. Beautiful in its own way, the Ta Prohm did provide a lot of photo opportunities and is definitely a place to visit within the complex.
After Ta Prohm I started riding back to Siem Reap town and enroute I stopped over at a couple of smaller structures. By then my excitement of Angkor Wat had come down considerably and add to that the scorching sun didn’t make me feel any better. I rode back to my room as quickly as possible, rested for a good few hours, caught up on all the office work and then in the evening I went down to the food street by the Mekong River, which definitely was the highlight of the day. More so than the temple itself 🙂
A lot of western folks consider Angkor Wat to be the greatest ever Hindu/Buddhist Temple they’ve ever seen, mainly due to the architecture, the stone sculpting and also due to its age. Little do they know that India has ancient temples with stone carvings and sculptures that are 1000 times more intricate, more precise, more elegant & more beautiful than the Angkor Wat. Not to take away anything from this beautiful site for sure, but having travelled across India for a few months during my PAN-India roadtrip and then seeing Angkor Wat clearly disappointed me as I had set my expectations way too high.
For a very long time I was excited about Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Don’t know if it was the videos or the photos or just the name in general that had me excited but I for sure it was atleast from the time the solo travel bug had hit me a few years ago. It was not until I entered that gate of the main temple in Angkor Wat that my excitement just came crashing down like never before in my life about anything. It was a classic case of “Expectations disappoint, but hope doesn’t”. Had I hoped for something exciting, rather than expecting to be excited I would’ve probably left the place a lot more happier than I actually did 🙂 Nevertheless I was still super happy that I made it to yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site
Akil Writes... 