Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

Siem Reap lies on the outskirts of Angkor Wat’s ruins; a long deserted city reclaimed by the forest. Alana, Andi, Andy and I stayed at Pop Rendezvous a 10 minute walk from the city’s nightlife and night markets. The main attraction in the city night is Pub Street a westernised avenue with restaurants, bars and clubs, a micro Khao San Road if you will. Angkor Wat Bar is where we spent most of our evenings as it played marginally better music than the rest, We met up with Canadian Jon from Chang Mai trekking, he had just about healed from his motorbike accident and introduced us some of his doppest rapping skills (when spitting his lyrical flow he goes by the name of J-Rizz). The daylight hours where devoted to what everyone comes here for; temple trekking, but that is the problem in itself because when you pass though the heavily guarded outskirts of the ancient city, what I found was slightly different for what I had envisaged, there are people everywhere, termites climbing their mounds. My Indiana Jones dreams of discovering a new booby trapped ruin were quickly dashed (although I did catch myself humming the tune now and then). Nethertheless you can’t help but look and marvel at vast temples and structures, as if it was only conceivable explanation is that some giant must have heaved these massive rocks and placed them precariously above intricately carved columns and then lent them against others like a house of cards. This architecture has survived the test of time and is incredibly impressive.

We spent three days exploring the city’s bones, we cycled through the grounds on aged pushbikes, disturbing families of monkeys that jump into the trees as you pedal through and along lakes and rivers, we braved heavy downpours that transformed dusty tracks into temporary ponds. The temple where Tomb Raider was filmed could have been the most beautiful but sadly was the least enjoyable, so many tourist pushing and shoving their way though, tripping over each other when someone stops poses for a the standard holiday snap, there was nothing to be done but let yourself be carried along on the current of people. However if you explore further into the depths of Angkor Wat you are rewarded, we came across a deserted ruin and just sat on the cool stone, watching the rays of light, reflected from pool of water that made the stone carved walls ripple. There were large traffic light coloured spiders anchored between great lintels that no longer supported anything and Lizards and Geckos that cautiously advanced out of cracks in stone. Another beautiful and almost empty temple had great trees growing from its thick walls, its roots reached from its trunk like knobbly arthritic fingers grasping the wall sides before sinking deep into the soil. We watched the sunset from one of the higher temples and cycled home, Alana’s bike died halfway and the girls flagged down a tuk tuk whilst Me and Andy pedaled hard because it was dark and the mosquitoes where biting.