Exploring and biking around Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat - the great temple complex of Cambodia built by the Khmer in the early 12th century. One thing I realized when I first looked at the map was how big this complex really was. It used to be a city of around 1 million people when London was only around 50,000. The historical temple complex is as big or bigger as the neighboring town of Siem Reap where the real hustle and bustle is today in that area. Even though they say it was a big city, the only remains of the area are the stone temples, the rest is just overgrown with forest. It's said that the stone buildings were reserved for the gods so everyone else just lived in wooden houses. That would at least make sense to the lack of any obvious evidence that there were homes here. They were probably swept away with time.

Here's the Google Map of the temple complex with my paths the two days:

I explored the temple complex for 2 days. The exciting part was the first day, when I decided to rent a bike to do some riding around the huge complex. After riding about half an hour to get there from my hostel in Siem Reap, I planned to go around the main sites of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom so I could save the best for last. To do this, I had to ride around the outside of the Angkor Thom, which is a walled in 10 square km area (the huge grey square on the map).

I saw a little path to the left of the main entrance, and decided to see where it led. Passing by a few small nice ruins

While riding down this path, I saw a few locals and even a few houses (definitely more like run down shacks though).

I even got chased down by a dog after passing by one of these houses. Dogs chasing me always scares me because I think they might bite....damn rabies. It eventually started to get a little more technical too, with fallen branches, bulging roots, and some deep sand, but nothing my 2 dollar a day single speed bike couldn't handle. Occasionally I would have to get off my bike to maneuver around something a bit more impassable or dangerous on the bike. It was great to be right next to the Angkor Thom moat where it was quiet while seeing locals and their houses. When I got to the southwest corner of the moat, I turned north and saw some other locals walking through the river...looked like it came straight from a movie.

I continued north up the edge on the small path, and started to get a little tired of weaving through the ever more difficult terrain I encountered. A few times I wasn't sure I'd be able to get through, but I made it! Here's some of the less difficult terrain.

When I finally got to the west entrance, I decided to just take the main road through so I didn't spend the rest of the day trying to weave through a path that might dead end. The entrance was nice, and since it was on the west side, there was no tourists there at all, only a few locals roaming around.

The road in was like most roads to the center of temples, just a long dirt road with forest on either side. I imagine back in the day there might've been more life and maybe some houses along these roads. When I got to the center, I didn't go to the main attraction there, Bayon, but I did stop at one of the sites where some monks give you a bracelet and bless you or something like that. I'm still wearing that bracelet now (about a month and a half later at the time of this writing).

I continued biking up to the north exit of Angkor Thom, and took the road over towards Preah Khan. The map I got from my hostel had a little path that looked like it went down under and around to the east entrance, and my guidebook said that the east entrance was the entrance you were supposed to enter through according to how the temple was built. I found an entrance that looked like it might be it, and rode along that path. This path was much nicer that the first one, a little bit more space with trees growing everywhere and little handmade wooden bridges over some creeks. I walked my bike over most of these bridges because they looked like serious danger for a bike.

Along that moat I also encountered some ladies gathering wood in the moat. They were all in the water collecting wood and there were a few other ladies packing the wood into bundles and putting it on their bikes.

When I made it to the south entrance of the temple, it was completely deserted. It looked like there was barely any traffic there at all, and the entrance was slightly falling apart. I stopped for a while to admire the crumbling entrance, and took a few pictures of myself on it. I tried to climb up to the area over the doorway, but I couldn't make it there in 30 seconds - the longest self timer available on my camera. Here it is caught mid stride.

So I continued around and finally made it to the east entrance, where there were long rows of stone sculptures leading to the entrance gate. Like many of the other entrances to the other temples, it looked like a bunch of guys pulling on a rope like tug-of-war. Some hawkers were there trying to sell me postcards and water and bs like that. Then some kid started playing this weird little instrument that made a wah wah sound. He was trying to sell them. Pretty cool once I figured out how to play it. It's a small stick a little longer than my hand. You put it up to your mouth and flick the end which vibrates a part of the stick. When you put the part with the vibrating wood to your mouth, your mouth acts like a sound hole on a guitar and amplifies the sound and changes it a little depending on what shapes you make. Much fun. I played it for a bit and bought 3 for a dollar after some haggling. Then I pulled out my ukulele and played a few songs for them.

By the way, did I mention it was hot? Like sweating profusely all the time hot. The weather report said it was only 86 degrees F or something like that but I think the humidity was super high. The fact that I was biking most of the time probably didn't help. This also meant I'm sweating through my shirt onto my poor wooden ukulele. Southeast Asia really put it to the test, but it survived.

So I eventually enter Preah Khan, and of course they're doing construction on the east gate like many other places around here to restore it for tourists, so I carry my bike through the walking entrance immediately beside it and bike to the center where the actual temple is. Pretty cool in there, some trees overgrowing some of the structure, and it wasn't too crowded either. After exploring for a while, I exited by the north entrance and continued heading east on the main road. I had a lot of temples that I wanted to see and the day was moving on. I stopped at the next road that actually leads down to the east entrance as well, but I wasn't sure at the time so I asked the guard there. After telling me it was Preah Khan, I told him I'd already been there. He didn't believe me when I told him I took the small path to the south of the temple haha, not until I told him about the women collected wood.

Continuing down the road to the east, I checked out a few more temples along the way. They were cool, but nothing special. Got some nice pics though along the way. I then continued a little faster, skipping a few places until I saw the only temple that day that was a little higher than the rest. I climbed up to the top and ended up meeting some other travelers and staying there until sunset. I'm not sure if it was the time of year or the smog, but for sunset you couldn't actually see the sun well before the actual sunset. Suddenly it would just disappear behind...something...maybe about 10 or 20 degrees up.

After sunset I had to bike home, but of course the sun had set so it was dusk and getting dark quick. The bike home was much longer than I expected, and about halfway through it got completely dark...but I pulled out my headlight anyway so I made it home with no problem. Then the evening came and it was time to go to Pub St! That's for another blog post.

I was actually planning to do a sunrise at Angkor Wat, but had 2 failed attempts at that. I blame it on the way too fun bar scene in Siem Reap, which kept me out late every night. Angkor Wat by day, pub st by night, that was the way to do it. The morning after my first day I actually did force myself out of bed at 5am, grabbed a tuk tuk with some other travelers and halfway through the drive realized that I had forgotten my 3 day ticket to Angkor Wat at home. When we got to the ticket check, the lines for 1 day passes were too long and I just decided to go back home and go back to sleep. By the time I got back it would be too late anyway. The second day I tried to get up I didn't even get out of bed. I had less motivation to go though, because I knew that the sunrise wasn't all it's cut out to be, especially after seeing the sunset and hearing that sunrise was the same experience.

On the morning that I just slept, I ended up going to the Angkor Wat complex later on that day. I went with another girl from my hostel, Jo from England. We hired a tuk tuk driver for the day this time and explored some of the main temple sites the way most tourists do it. The tuk tuk driver would take us to the temple and then pick us up from the same place or the other side to take us to the next one.

First to the famous temple of Angkor Wat. It was amazing, but after my crazy experience biking through the back country of the temples, nothing really compared. Here's my photo!

Then off to Ta Prohm, the Tomb Raider temple as people called it since some scenes from that movie were filmed there. This place was really cool because nature has taken over a lot of the temple, with trees growing all over it.

Then off to Bayon, which was the temple right in the middle of Angkor Thom. This one was famous for it's many faces that look strikingly similar to the king at the time it was built.

I also encountered some locals in costume willing to pose for me...for 1 dollar. Worth it.

As with most of the temples, there was a holy place where they gave you an incense stick and you put it in a little jar as per the ritual. This was one in Bayon.

After that we explored a few less notable ruins. One was nicknamed the jigsaw ruin, since it was taken apart for restoration before the Khmer rogue took power over Cambodia, and during the genocide all records were lost of which pieces went where, so they don't know how to put it back together again.

It was still mostly intact though and had some nice views.

After this we went to the "sunset temple" to see the sun set over Angkor Wat. At the bottom of the hill it says closes at 5:30pm, but it was around 4:45pm so we thought no problem. When we got up to the top, however, there was apparently a line because only 400 or so people were allowed on top at a time...and at 5:30pm they just cut off the line wherever it is without notice. Kind of annoying, but eh I don't want to go into it. We walked over to the corner of the hill which was the only place where you could also see Angkor Wat other than the top of the temple. Angkor Wat was pretty far away too pictures would barely pick it up with the smog/haze. We did find an elephant over there though!

And that was Angkor Wat! Quite the place.