Backpacking in Cambodia — Day 4— Angkor Wat
Day 4— Siem Reap <-> Angkor Wat [November 22, 2022]
Head here for Day 3
Angkor “Wat” a sun rise!
Anyone who had heard we were going to Cambodia had one thing to say — don’t miss the Angkor Wat sunrise. With all that hype, we were ready to leave at 4:30 AM. Our remorque driver from previous evening highlighted he had slept overnight outside the hotel so that he wasn’t late to pick us up. We snacked a bit only to realise our hostel also arranged pre-paid packed breakfast boxes for folks wanting to head out early for the sunrise. It was still pitch dark as we made our way to Angkor Wat ticket centre past a number of fancy five star hotels that seemed like historical palaces in their own right.
The ticket centre seemed well prepared for handling large crowds so felt a lot more majestic a hallway when we landed there with about another fifteen more people looking to buy their tickets. There are separate counters per type of ticket. We went for the single day entry ($37) and they had a special offer where you got 1 more day free. If you are doing the small circuit of 5–6 major temples, I think a day is enough with a tuktuk to get you around but if you are looking to hit the grand circuit of temples too, I think atleast 3 day pass is a bare minimum. Also if you are planning to trek/cycle around, then give yourself atleast a week to do it all. The tickets are non-transferable and have your photograph on it and there are multiple check points all through the temples with stiff fines so make sure you are keeping the pass handy and safe.
Using mobile torches, people marched in the pitch darkness over a floating bridge across the widest moat I have ever sensed (pitch dark so couldn’t see it yet) to the South pond of the main complex behind the lake from where you get the best photo angle of the sun rising over Angkor Wat with the reflection hitting the water. There are guides available for the main complex at $20 waiting near the bridge. We decided to punt the guide for this temple and explore on our own.
Since there had been unseasonal thunderstorms this week, the place was muddy and there was a rare chance that we would witness a sunrise considering the cloudy conditions. Being a Bengalurean had me prepared, as almost all the celestial activities in the city, in the last three years have been hijacked by ominous cloud covers right at the opportune moments!
Soon the tour groups started popping in which also mean’t larger crowds by the lake jostling for space for the best view in anticipation of the sunrise or as Jagnoor put it “Goro ki chhath puja”. There were easily atleast around 200 odd tourists by the time the first light hit around 5:45 AM with downcast skies and the lake covered with a lot of green vegetation reducing the surface area for a clear reflection spot. Realising it is a dampener, we decided to move on to check out the complex.
We stumbled onto a section of shacks serving breakfast. The guy running Angelina Jolie cafe called us over setting a table up with “sunrise view”. The Danish duo from our bus made a cameo appearance here too. We ordered extremely fluffy pancakes and what turned out to be gigantic portions of juice shakes. Any guesses on my poison of choice? After pouring all that liquid in, we leveraged the clean washrooms right behind the shacks and then embarked onto our version of Temple Run.
The Capital of Temples
Angkor Wat is a humongous temple kingdom built in early 12th Century by King Suryavavarman II, dedicated to Lord Vishnu. After the Chams from present day Vietnam sacked the temples in 1177 CE and King Jayavarman VII won it back , he leaned towards Buddhism and had the temples replaced with Buddhist iconography towards the late 12th Century which remains to present day.
The main complex is an earthly representation of Mount Meru — the five peaked holy mountain. Most folks plan to land here during the Equinox when the Sunrise is aligned with the central tower when seen from the West Gate highlighting the astronomical engineering that was also included in the construction of this massive complex. The higher floors are a steep climb but give a lovely view of the surroundings and provide you deeper appreciation of this marvel of a construction even if the paint and artefacts are long gone. There is also a Shivling in the campus along with a number of Apsara motifs all around and murals of the Ramayana and Mahabharata which we didn’t spot.
We spent about 1.5 hours exploring the complex before deciding to move on to the other temples. A Cambodian couple was there for their pre wedding shoot and they needn’t have hired a photographer because they got an army of international photographers capturing candid shots from all angles possible whether they liked it or not.
The Churning of the Sea — Tonle Om Gate / South Gate
Angkor Thom was the prior capital city and it had 5 entrances to it. The best preserved one to date remains the South Gate with Naga balustrades held on both sides of the road by giant stone figures of Devas (with slender oval eyes and a light smile) on one side and Asuras (with bulging eyes and grimaces) on the other. The Bayon temple then metaphorically became the rock at the centre of Hindu story of “Samudra Manthan” which leads to the origin of elixir (amrit). Whilst closed to tourists now, these gates also have interior chambers that allowed guards to move around and keep watch.
“Everything reminds me of him”
That is probably what the King wanted a few centuries ago as Bayon (originally called Jayagiri or the Mountain of Brahma) with four sided faces on 54 mounts totally upto 216 giant faces on the temple. There is a lot of speculation on whether the weathered faces are of Brahma, Jayaraman VII himself or Bodhisattva. Considering the mixed history of how Hinduism was surplanted by Buddhism and then reverted to Hinduism before finally settling for Buddhism of this region, it could potentially even be all of the above. It’s not like it was written in stone. hmmmm… If the 216 faces are a marvel, wait till you get to see the wall sized reliefs depicting daily life and war scenes from the 12th Century after defeating the Chams and recovering Khmer pride and glory. The temples are as much a dedication to the Gods as it is to Jayaraman VII who is considered to have ushered the Golden Age of Angkor.
We got ourselves a guide here (you need to haggle from the original $20 , we got him for $12 though could have haggled more). It was worth it since he was able to help us appreciate the nuances of the massive reliefs all around. One of the most interesting bits was stone engravings which showed Buddha been engraved over to look like lotuses when there was a switch over to Hinduism. It reminds you of those online visual puzzles of what do you see in the picture and there are two right answers. With the number of questions we had, I think we managed to get full “paisa vasool” out of the guide to a point that he was probably wondering why did I pick these two. I think we made up for it when he went bonkers with my Google Pixel 6 setting us up for the different photographs he wanted us to take including kissing the stone faces. He really put his heart into those photos when he noticed we weren’t giving the due effort he expected for those poses. Maybe because we are Indians and he has handled a lot of them, I noticed he really tried to downplay the Hindu iconography and reiterated the Buddhist elements of the country’s history and elements in the temple.
The largest 3D Jigsaw puzzle
As you walk out of Bayon and go past Wat Preah Ngok — a small Buddhist chapel with a decked up Buddha, you come across Baphoun temple. The temple built on a sand base had to be disassmbled and reconstructed from scratch to prevent it from completely collapsing and all the plans after disassembling were lost during the Khmer Rouge revolution in the 1970s. This led to its reconstruction in 2000s to be the largest 3D jigsaw puzzle by the archaeologists involved with the restoration. They managed to do a fine job to get this 11th Century temple to look similar to what it might have been originally envisioned by Udayadityavarman II. It was dedicated to Lord Shiva though now it has been converted to a Buddhist temple. A common theme to the temples here similar to the Aztecs and Mayans are these steep mountain like structures with the Gods generally placed at the top though they do provide for lovely sweeping views of the countryside.
Further down is Phimeanakas — a 10th Century Hindu temple which could be Angkor Wat’s own Pyramids built in the times of Rajendravarman, In the vicinity is also the Eastern pond and the Terrace of the Elephants and other minor structures.
Along the way, we also stopped for a quick look around at Chau Say Tevoda and Thommanon temples which are right opposite each other and have intricate stone work and date from around the 11th Century.
Paging Angelina Jolie at Ta Prohm
The next temple has been made a lot more famous courtesy Tomb Raider and is also locally known as the Tomb Raider temple. Though the original entry was from the East, that is under renovation so you enter the temple from the West gate. A lot of vendors are selling their wares from harem pants, kurtas, paintings to books on Angkor Wat. One of the sellers tried pawning off a book to Jagnoor for $11 but didn’t know how to say the number so kept on saying $1–$1 which grabbed “our roving eye for killer deals” for a second before he corrected himself with his fingers. A lovely wooded moat with a wooden bridge makes for a picturesque scene which is quickly followed up by the temple itself.
The Ta Prohm temple has been renovated by ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) and probably was one of the toughest restoration projects amongst all the temples as nature has truly taken over the temple. The beauty of this specific temple is the striking balance between nature and temple as the forest has literally made the temple one of its own with massive branches and roots of the Sponge tree literally holding onto the temple in certain parts.
If you need to refresh your social media profile photographs or your dating / marriage profiles, Ta Prohm is the perfect place as you find awe inspiring corners in the maze of a temple that it is. We probably did two rounds of the entire temple exploring the twists and the turns. It did help that it had got a bit cloudy now giving us a respite from the hot sun. Some of the iconic spots include the framed doorway under a tree, two door setup at close proximity, the house-tree (not sure what the opposite of a tree house would be so bear with me) where a tree has overtaken a gopura along with a tiny motif which looks like stegasaurus.
Banteay Kdei and Srah Srang
The final 2 stops our driver had lined up for us were Bateay Kdei which translates to “Citadel of Chambers” — a long monastic complex of Buddhist origins. We ended up meeting the Hyderabadi couple here whose driver had basically broken down the same itinerary for them into two days since they had started their day around 12 noon. We moved across the road to Srah Srang which is a large reservoir and is considered to be a good spot to take in the sunset. Though we had enough of Vitamin D dosage for the day and decided to call it a day with Angkor Wat still reeling from the magnitude this awe inspiring architecture from 12th Century CE provided. We had heard a lot about the brilliance of Angkor Wat and it was well worth the hype even if the sunrise wasn’t. Our driver had stored cold water bottles for us and passed it along as we made the long ride back to our hostel and reached our room by 2 PM. Taking a shower, grabbing some lunch at the cafe in the hostel, we decided to take a well deserved nap through the afternoon into the late evening.
Shopping around Pub Street
Later in the evening, Pub Street had a deserted look since there was no major game lined up. We checked out the Temple Pub considering Temple seemed to be the Tito’s (of Baga Goa fame) of Pub Street with numerous stores, hotels and pubs around the area. Whilst relatively empty, it did have a good set up — seating on the ground, dance floor on the first and a sports bar on the second floor.
We then headed over to Siem Reap Book Centre which had a good selection of fridge magnets and other souvenirs. They also had a booking centre where we managed to book the Tonle Sap Floating Village tour and also two tickets on a sleeper bus to Sihanoukville for next day night. Have a strong feeling we were getting that guy to do his first sale ever as we seemed to be navigating the bookings for him as he seemed to be lost looking at the booking brochures and payment receipts for the first time. (More on this in the next blog).
Also walked down the Old market and picked up souvenir tshirts at $2.5 after a bit of haggling but we felt we had gone easy on them and probably had scope to haggle more. The shopkeeper quipped after the sale, “ it’s not a fair price for me but I love money.” as she kissed the notes before putting them into her purse.
Let’s “Sambo” for the night
Another tourist favourite and rated high on TripAdvisor, across the canal is Sambo. It was packed for the night but the staff was extremely sweet and polite and asked us to wait for a couple of minutes as they settled the bill on one of the tables. Once ready, turns out the staff was trained to be extremely chatty with everyone — we ended up getting to overhear a lot of stories from the other tables as we waited for our food to arrive. I went with red rice and Khmer vegan lok lak equivalent whilst Jagnoor tried the traditional Amok. The food was really good made palatable for Western taste buds I am sure and the place had a friendly vibe to it. After a hearty meal, we stopped by at Temple 24x7 convenience store — felt like Nature’s basket equivalent. Picking up a few more snacks and drinking water, we headed back to the hostel past pubs and massage parlors that were getting ready for a late night.
Key Details
Mad Monkey Siem Reap (Standard Double +) — ~ $25 per night
Angkor Wat Small Circuit round trip with remorque — $20
Angkor Wat entry ticket — 1 day pass at $37. As of November 2022, it was a 1+1 day pass. Other options are 3 day and 7 day passes. You cannot book tickets online and have to collect it in person as your photo gets printed on the ticket.
Major Temples you should see : Angkor Wat, Baphoun, Bayon, Ta Prohm
Sambo Thai and Khmer Cuisine — $$ — $15 for a meal for two.
Siem Reap Book Center — good selection of souvenirs, ticket bookings and money exchange.
Tonle Sap Floating Village awaits you on Day 5