Temples, Temples and more Temples

Today is the start of our temple adventure; Tea, our new guide, called us yesterday to confirm an 8.30am start. We had breakfast in the hotel, another room service-esque type offering. It was good but I’m not sure it stands up to the best hotel in the world...

Our guide mentioned that he was changing our tour around a bit (for our benefit!) so instead we would be driving 70km to a temple called Beng Mealea; this is a temple from around the 12th century and has not been restored att all. It has a kind of romance to it, with the trees growing anywhere and everywhere. As it is out of the way, there are also far fewer visitors to the temple. 

On the way to our first stop, we had to pop in to buy our tickets for all the main temples; you can get a 1, 3 or 7 day pass which allows you to visit the temples on the list. The ticket also has your picture on it as they are quite stringent in their checks. We were told in advance to buy a hat so did so at the same time; Iain went for a Stetson, as you do in Asia!

After a few hours drive, we made it to the first temple. As I said earlier, there are far less visitors which made our visit much more relaxed but we had to buy a separate ticket. This was built as a Hindu temple, but their are some carvings of Buddhist teachings. Cambodian kings originally followed Hinduism but now the country seems to have taken parts of Buddism and added it to the Hindu religion. Much less is known about this temple as it has not been restored but they do know it is also from the same period as Angkor Wat..

After our visit to the first temple, we had another drive ahead of us to get to the “Tomb Raider” temple, well that’s what the tourists call it because it was one of the locations for the Lara Croft series with Angelina Jolie. The temples real name is Ta Prohm and was built in the late 12th and early 13th century; their has been a combined effort with India to restore the temple, although much is still to be done. The trees growing out of the ruins are quite amazing and this adds to the beauty. On the way to this temple, we stopped briefly to take a photo of a 10th Century temple, Prasat Kravan, made of red sandstone. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time for a full visit as we had Angkor Wat to look forward to in the afternoon.

The Red Brick Temple

We spent 45 minutes wandering around the tomb raider temple; it was incredibly busy and the sun was starting to get very hot. Our guide decided we should go for lunch and aim to visit “the number one tourist attraction in the world” around 3pm. We stopped just opposite Angkor Wat at a lovely restaurant called Nearly Angkor; there was free wifi and my first thought was to check the weather as I felt like I had been constantly soaked in sweat the whole day. It was 34 degrees, but real feel was 41 degrees; no wonder we were struggling. We ordered beer and food which included chips; i always have a craving when i am in a hot climate, must be the gallon of salt I add to them! We spent an hour having lunch and finally started to cool down....

At 3pm, we walked across the car park to the Angkor Wat complex; it was stunning and I wasn’t even inside yet! The main sandstone entrance in is under restoration just now, and has been for over a year, so we had to walk over a temporary bridge made of floating airbags. After showing our tickets, and walking over the moat, there was a monkey eating an ice-cream, not exactly what you expect. We entered the complex using the elephants gate, I’m not sure what the guide was trying to tell us! 

Angkor Wat is one of the worlds largest religious monuments, built in the 12th century as a Hindu temple and dedicated to Vishnu, God of Protection. It was built for the Khmer King Suryavarman II and apparently took 37 years to build; this was what they thought to begin with but there is so many intricate carvings that they now believe it took much longer. At the centre of the temple, there are five towers which represent Mount Meru, the home of the gods. It is extraordinary how they built it given that they had to transport millions of tonnes of sandstone from the mountains almost 60 km away, the poor elephants. Our guide reckoned over 40,000 elephants were used to transport and hoist the stone and over 400,000 people were involved in putting the jigsaw together and then decorating it. We walked around the complex, admiring the beautiful pillars and carvings; it was so hot, every now and then, we had to sit down for a few minutes. It is hard to describe just how beautiful the Khmer architecture is and particularly, on this scale.

As the sun was going down, we decided to get a head start back to town. The temple was only 4km from our hotel but we wanted to beat the many bus-loads of Chinese tourists that are here on holiday. Our guide dropped us at the hotel; we were shattered and ready for a drink and a shower; we had both! 

By this point, it was almost 7pm so we decided to have a lazy evening and go to one of the hotel restaurants for dinner. It is about a block from the hotel, so we wandered along slowly. I was determined to have Beef Lok Lak, another traditional dish in Cambodia; it is a bit like a spicy stew with a fried egg on top. I had that and pandan chicken, which is marinated chicken wrapped in Pandan leaves, both were delicious. I also had a few glasses of wine and felt totally knackered; it was time for bed as we apparently had a 3km trek tomorrow.....