Where are Tinus and Barrie?

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Yesterday we arrived in Siem Reap, a city that would probably still be a quiet French-colonial-style town now, if it wouldn’t have been for the “discovery” of the most famous sight in Cambodia, and maybe in complete Southeast Asia: Angkor: an ancient city, almost a 1000 years old, in the middle of the jungle.

Today, Siem Reap has more flights at its airport than Phnom Penh, and more hotels and restaurants are settling here than you can count. Still, it’s a nice place with good restaurants and excellent inexpensive accommodation.

Dutch as we are, we decided to explore Angor not by tuk-tuk, but by bike. For just $6 we had two bikes at our disposal for the entire day, with the entrance to Angkor just a 30-minute ride away. Unfortunately we took the wrong road: tickets were needed, and we needed to backpedal for another 40 minutes or so to get the tickets. Fortunately the officer at duty offered us two motos for $4 that would take us to the ticket office and back. After that, this officer also turned out to be a tuk-tuk driver on the odd days when he wasn’t checking the Angkor tickets. It took us a little time to convince him that we really weren’t interested in his services and just wanted him to check the tickets, thank you very much.

So, we finally got to decide what to see first in Angkor. That’s quite a challenge, because Angkor is huge. Profoundly huge. Absolutely gobsmacking huge. The place is like a 1000 square kilometers, almost five times the size of the complete city of Amsterdam. Most people only know Angkor Wat, but that’s just the cherry on top. There are literally hundreds of temples in the complex, from barely intelligible piles of rubble to glorious structures like Angkor Wat. And everything in between.

Between 1900 and 1970, when the French restored most of the complex and paved roads, they created two courses: the petit course and the grand course. Don’t let the name petit fool you, it’s still a nice 18 kilometers of road and more than 10 temples. We decided to take the petit course, but in reverse order, to avoid the hordes of tourists that like to start at Angkor Wat and end at Angkor Thom (the two most famous spots).

Cycling and walking around the temples of Angkor is a profoundly weird experience: it’s like being on the set of Indiana Jones or playing Tomb Raider. But of course, you realize that it’s not Angkor that’s like Indiana Jones, it’s the other way around: the cliche of the temple complex in the middle of a jungle is not something that was created out of thin air, it’s how Angkor is.

We actually didn’t reach Angkor Wat or Angkor Thom. We visited Prasat Kravan, Banteay Srei, Ta Keo (what a climb!) and the so-called Tomb Raider temple (the movie was partially filmed here): Ta Prohm. Apparently the old gods of Angkor thought that was enough, because at around 15.00 or so rain started pouring down and didn’t stop, so we cycled back to the hotel, were we arrived like wet dogs.

So, we’re in for a quite a treat tomorrow, with the two biggest attractions still waiting for our visit. Although i guess i won’t be that enthusiastic tomorrow when we get up at 6 AM. But sunrise at the temples will make all good, i’m promised.

Barrie in the infamous egg poncho

Siem Reap is a pretty dangerous place.

In the bus from Phnom Penh.

Buy meat, then pray.