Our first night in Siam Reap starts with sunset on top of a temple on a huge hill, along with about 2000 other tourists, maddest sunset we've seen as the sun went behind a cloud resulting an orange outline to the cloud resembling weird lightening!! Then an early night as we are up before dawn to spend the day seeing temple ruins at Angkor......
So the 2nd March starts at 5.30 am to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. This old city dates from around 1000 AD and was the centre of the Khmer empire until roughly 1430 when the capital city shifted to the better situated Phnom Penh (where we're now sitting).
It was worth the early start, this place is stunning, we've seen the palace with the most 'bling' in Bangkok but this was totally different. At least ten big temples of slightly differing ages form what used to be the centre of the Khmer empire, its a huge place requiring a motorbike towing a trailer with us in it to get round!!! Hopefully the pictures Sian is putting on will look as good as it can on screen. I'm going to let the pictures do the talking but all I can say is that these are where they filmed some of Tomb Raider, thats the kind of place it is, it was like discovering the Inca trail in South America or some similar amazing place of history. I can only say it is so good I think everyone should go to Cambodia especially. Apart from the very strong (eye-watering at times) bat droppings etc in the roofs of a lot of the temples.
The one downside to it all is the heat and dust, we drank about 5 litres of water to one trip to the loo, and thats not an exageration! By 3pm we were knackered and so ended our extraordinary trip to Angkor. Many, many amazing memories of this day........
3rd March 2005- Up early again to get the 7.30 bus to Phnom Penh, bracing ourselves for another truely awful ride across rutts and bumps.......only to end up on a bus that had working air-con, and we were on surfaced roads!!!! Such a relief. We stopped for refreshments at Skuon, a town offering very little unless you're partial to a deep fried Tarantula, after eating the crickets and ants in Bangkok I ........no I didnt, but they did actually smell quiet nice, maybe next time....
Anyway we rocked into Cambodia's capital at 2pm to be mobbed by touts for hotels, they pretty much started fighting over us (and two english lads we'd met in Siam Reap) and ended up going to a hotel that was full!! Idiots. So we trudge back across to find Royal guest house and a fourth floor room overlooking the city!! All's well that ends well, of back there now for some banges and mash!! See ya............
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment