Day 77: Angkor Day 1
After relaxing for a few days after my overnight flight from Bali, it was time to visit the temples of Angkor. The advice I’d been given — what I recalled of it — by Serena in Pai was to try the short loop (mini-tour) and the big loop (grand tour) and then a third day to re-visit the temples you liked. My thought was to modify this a bit and save Angkor Wat for the last day (and go in the morning, for dawn and to avoid the crowds) and then to see anything else I wanted to see.
So my first day was the mini-loop, excluding Angkor Wat. This would include the Bayon temple of Angkor Thom and the famous Ta Prohm. Even through I bristle at the name, everyone here attaches the moniker “The Tomb Raider Temple” to it. Was that movie really all that memorable? Oh, well.
Itinerary set, next I needed to chose my transportation for the day.
The Transporter
The first and most common option is a tour. The two kinds of tours on offer are the group tours and the private tours. As you’d expect, you pay for flexibility with money and solitude. I mention this last part because unless you gather a group together to visit temples, the private tours will be just you and the driver. This driver may not may not know a lot about the temples, and may or not speak good english. A group tour will give you some other folks to talk to and a guide which should have language skills and knowledge of the temples.
The next option is the really inexpensive one: bicycle. Is that comfortable? The extremely flat and fairly windless environment of Angkor balances against the hot, tropical weather to make this a very marginal experience. It’s suitable only for the mini-tour unless you’re a serious and in-shape cyclist and don’t mind 30 Km of cycling mixed in with lots of walking up and down temples.
I am not a serious and in-shape cyclist. Tooling around town the day before taught me that. Though I’m lighter and probably stronger than I was when I cycled every day, the reduced padding (ahem) makes riding these cheap, fixed-gear, rental bikes a painful and possibly sterilizing experience.
My lack of conditioning nixed not only the “standard” bikes, but also a mountain bike tour I found, [KKO Offroad][kko-offroad]. This included the lesser-known temples and cross-country cycling which seemed like a fun alternative.
Why not a scooter? I love motorbikes! Unfortunately there’s a law in Siem Reap preventing renting them to foreigners.
After deciding against all these, I turned to a modern alternative: the e-bike.
The e-bike skirts around Siem Reap’s law against renting scooters to foreigners. It’s a bicycle — it has (turns out, useless) pedals. But it’s propelling entirely by electric motor. It’s pitched as the green alternative which won’t leave you exhausted and parched.
So bright and early I showed up at the e-bike store and rented mine.
Then I was off to the museum to start the day.
Bayon Information Center
Well, not really the museum. The archeological and restoration projects at Angkor under the UNESCO umbrella are sponsored by various countries. The Japanese Association for Safeguarding Angkor (and Chinese and Indian, etc..) is in charge of restoring the Bayon Temple of Angkor Thom, part of the last great building efforts of the Angkor empire, it’s swan song under Jayavarman VII. The JASA built the [Bayon Information Center][bayon-information-project], a free museum to explain the site and their efforts to restore it.
My first stop before going to the temple itself was to visit this center so I could act as my own guide and have some idea what was going on. I’d recommend anyone else do the same. The video presentation and exhibits do a great job of explaining what you’re about to see, why and how the temple came to be. And it’s free!
Tickets
Siem Reap is a relatively small town and didn’t seem at all overcrowded. So I did get a clear picture of the scale of the tourism at Angkor until I reached the ticket booths at 9:30 AM. There were eight lines for the eight counters selling 3 and 7 day passes (and more elsewhere selling single day passes). There were at least a dozen motorcoaches and innumerable tuk tuks. It took me more than 45 minutes in the hot sun to get my pass.
This crush of fellow tourists would be my constant companions throughout the day.
Bayon
[Bayon][bayon] temple was the largest on my agenda and I went there first. It sits at the heart of Angkor Thom, a three kilometer square walled city. It’s a huge temple inside a vast domain spotted with other ruins.
The temple is magnificent. It’s massive but the interior corridors are surprisingly intimate. Smiling Avalokitesvara 1 — the Buddha of compassion — faces gaze out in all directions from five spires.
It was a fascinating structure and an active restoration site: cranes and piled stonework sat in the courtyard. The sight of all those half-smiling faces looking out at me had an odd psychological effect. Like being watched, but not in a bad way.
It was also my first experience with the late morning heat and the swarm of tourists. It left me so thirsty I gladly paid $1.50 for 1.5L of water. Back-home prices!
Bas Relief at Bayon
Bas relief at Bayon. Depicting Jayavarman IIV’s victory over the Cham.
Bayon Tower
One of the many towers at Bayon temple.
Bayon Buddha Statue
Buddha seated in meditation on a Naga in Bayon temple.
Hallway in Bayon
Broken hallway in Bayon.
Bayon Tower Face
Detail of a face at Bayon.
Bas Relief at Bayon
Tower at Bayon
Bayon Entrance
The main, western entrance to the Bayon Temple at Angkor Thom.
Side view of Bayon
Side view of Bayon
Thommanon
[Thommanon][Thommanon] is a tiny little temple just outside Angkor Thom. It was worth a 15 minute visit just to get away from the crowds and to restore my sense of scale after Bayon.
Thommanon
Thommanon
Thommanon Floor Detail
Thommanon floor detail.
Doorway at Thommanon
Ta Keo
[Ta Keo][ta-keo] is a larger, plainer-looking temple. Its construction was halted before the ornamental carvings were added. It reminded me a bit of an Aztec or Mayan ruin, being a step pyramid with several tiers and towers at the top and a long central staircase.
At the top, in the tallest tower, sits a Buddha statue and a monk handing out incense for prayer. It was a wonderful, peaceful little stop during the visit.
Temple Top at Ta Keo
Temple capping the stepped-pyramid of Ta Keo.
Climbing Ta Keo
The central stairway up the stepped pyramid of Ta Keo.
Buddha Alter at Ta Keo
Buddha in the shrine at the top of Ta Keo temple.
Incense at Ta Keo
Incense for burned in prayer in the shrine at the top of Ta Keo.
Ta Prohm
The so-called “Tomb Raider Temple” is rightly famous for its ambiance: the jungle reclaiming the ancient temple gives it an air of mystic secrecy. Trees seem to be scaling the walls. They grow into the brickwork and dislodge the massive stones, presenting a beautitful and reified parable of nature’s resilience against man’s incursions.
The Indian team has the honor and incredible workload of restoring this temple. The placards show astonishing progress in restoring the courtyard. But there is so much to do: many of the side chambers seem bombed out and full of rubble. And then there’s the tricky question of how to deal with those Hollywood-famous trees sprouting from the stone: they’re beautiful, but they’re slowly destroying the building. Tough job.
The fame brings the crowds and this one was a full as Bayon. Still there were enough small paths and corridors that some solitude was possible. You simply need to look beyond the photo-op tree with its queue of visitors.
Ta Prohm Back Entrance
Ta Prohm Trees
Trees at Ta Prohm along with broken wall pieces.
Ta Prohm Trees
Tree ripping apart another wall at Ta Prohm.
Ta Prohm Trees
Trees ripping apart the walls at Ta Prohm.
Ta Prohm Trees
Tree drooping down the walls of Ta Prohm.
Collapsed Doorway at Ta Prohm
Collapsed doorway at Ta Prohm
Ta Prohm Side View
Ta Prohm Side View
View of Ta Prohm from one of its side walls
View of Ta Prohm from one of its side walls.
Tomb Raider Tree
Tourists queue up to take their pictures in front of the famous ‘Tomb Raider’ Tree at Ta Prohm.
Side view of Tomb Raider Tree
Side view of Tomb Raider Tree at Ta Prohm with viewing stand visible.
E-Bikes Are the Future ?
The e-bike was a bit of a miss. It’s not that much less costly than a tour: $10 vs. $13. And with a tour you get a more comfortable ride, both from the seat and from the AC. You also get the ease of not worrying about directions, not dealing with the lack of signage. This last part was a surprising problem: the signage at Angkor is poor and I often found myself using the mediocre Google Maps on my tenuous data connection to supplement the rare roadsigns.
Finally, all electric vehicles inspire some amount of range anxiety. My ‘gas gauge’ was a voltmeter, starting at 55V and supposedly running out at 44V. I was advised to keep it under 20 Km/h and ‘I’d be fine’. Yet still I worried — how much further will 3V get me, exactly? Back home?
So while I continue to love the idea of the e-bike, I decided I’d take a tour for day 2, the big loop.
Exhausted
After Ta Prohm I was done. Like a toddler I was tired and slipped and skinned my knee and just wanted to go home. This was one of the freedoms afforded by the e-bike: I simply left.
Jumping in the pool back at the guesthouse felt like heaven.
So, what did I think about Angkor after my first visit? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find the crowds and the heat a big negative. Sadly they really detracted from my enjoyment of the temples.
Even so, the buildings are truly amazing. Incredibly beautiful and a testament to inspiring organization and construction skills. I simply need to find a better way to enjoy them…
Tuk Tuk Drivers Relaxing
The tuk-tuk drivers spend a lot of time relaxing while their clients tour the temples.
Angkor Thom Gate
One of the gates of Angkor Thom. There are one each for the cardinal directions, and a fifth, victory, gate.