Angkor Wat - eighth wonder of the world?

***Apologies for delay in posting, brevity of this post and scarcity of pictures - facebook and blogger are both blocked throughout Vietnam, so the entire process of uploading pictures, transferring them to my blog, and blogging at all involves hours of fiddling around with proxy servers, which are painfully slow....Also apologies to everyone on facebook I should have been in touch with. Censorship sucks! ***

We liked Siem Reap so much we stayed there for a week, far longer than we had intended to. Post-orphanage visit, our remaining time was spent during the day wandering the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat, and at night on Pub Street, a pedestrianised road lined with cosmopolitan bars and eateries. We ate at one place, the Khmer House Restaurant, no less than three times - Mick Jagger has reputedly eaten there in the past, and the food really was excellent. Among the things we tried were amok (steamed fish with coconut), a sour winter melon and tamarind curry, Khmer laap (which we preferred to the Laos version) and a Khmer lemongrass soup. We also liked a French restaurant called Le Tigre de Papiere - it served lovely pizzas which had cream atop them as well as cheese... We were going to have dinner at a bar Angelina Jolie visited but the drinks were twice as much as the pub next door so we left!

 Angkor Wat is really a massive complex of temples set in a large wooded park. We opted for a three day pass to the park although even that length of time does not allow you to see all of them. On our first day we cycled in from Siem Reap, a journey of just 7km. Our route around the park was about another 20km. Cycling was very pleasant, as although it was extremely hot, much of the road was shaded by the overhanging trees. The temples we visited on our first day were smaller and more remote, and so a lot less touristy. It was easy to feel at times like an explorer coming across ruins in the jungle, especially considering Angkor Wat was not rediscovered until after the second world war.

On our second day at Angkor Wat, Dave persuaded me to get a tuk-tuk around the park, which admittedly was very comfortable and meant we didn't have to cycle back in the dark. We were visiting some of the more famous temples, which meant inevitably there were more people there and it was harder to fully appreciate the beauty of the ruins. We started with Angkor Thom, itself once a walled city of over a million inhabitants. It had some temples with incredibly preserved stone carvings, and another with mysterious faces carved into each of its towers.

We checked out a couple of smaller ones after that, before visiting Ta Prohm, where much of Tombraider was filmed. The jungle is devouring it - massive trees jut out of the ramparts, and vines creep over piles of fallen stones. For sunset we went to a temple with views over the park, but there were hundreds of people crowded onto each available inch of the walls, so a lot of the romance was lost.

On our final day at Angkor Wat, we got up at the horrendous time at 4.30am, and left our guesthouse at 5am in order to be there for sunrise. The park was pitch black when we arrived, save for the occasional flash of someone's torch. Walking across the drawbridge which spans the moat encircling the main temple felt like some kind of ancient pilgrimage. Closer to the temple itself, some entrepreneurial people were selling seats overlooking the lake, with a free hot drink. The sunrise itself was beautiful to watch.

At around 6am we left our chairs to wander around the main temple, Angkor Wat itself. It was virtually deserted, which gave it a kind of magic. I would definitely recommend making an effort to visit Angkor Wat at quieter times as the experience is so much better if you do. For those interested, there are more pictures on Dave's facebook and I should have mine up soon, provided I can get access....