Monday 6 February 2012

Angkor Wat

Once again we used the same tuk tuk drivers and booked a sunrise tour of Angkor Wat. We were charged $6 each for the tuk tuk and the tickets to Angkor Wat are priced at $20 for the day.

Tip:
Take a jumper as it's chilly during the early morning. For women a scarf may come in handy as in one of the temples i wasn't allowed in because my shorts were above my knees but to be honest this didn't affect my trip in any way. A torch is also useful if you are embarking on a sunrise tour.

After buying our tickets we arrived at Angkor Wat in the dark and waited patiently with a large crowd of other eager tourists for the sun to come up. We didn't have the best sunrise but still managed to get a few good shots.

For the next few hours we enjoyed the beauty of the relatively quiet Angkor Wat until we got hungry and decided we needed some breakfast. Angkor Wat is a really fascinating place to explore and some of our time here was spent relaxing on the grass and taking in the magnificent views.
 Ian, Jason, Luke & Josh
 Aaron, Luke & Ian

 Ian, Luke, Aaron & Josh

After breakfast we were taken to another temple. As well as the intricate carvings there were large faces dominating the structure, unfortunately we weren't told of the name of this temple but it was a pleasure to visit and would make a great place for hide and seek!


The final temple we were driven to had huge trees growing out of it and much of the temple was in ruins, however some of this was now in the process of being restored.
The tuk tuk driver called this temple the tomb raider temple as, for obvious reasons, this was where the computer game Tomb Raider was based around. The boys seemed to like this fact but i was just in awe of the tree roots that tightly gripped the stonework and tangled within the temple walls which would of course inevitably cause the stone to crack and tumble.

By 1:30pm we were all pretty worn out (i have no idea how anyone can do a sunrise tour and carry on through to the whole afternoon!) and were dropped off back to our guesthouse.

There are so many temples here i think you would need a couple of months to visit them all and there is obviously a huge chunk that we have missed out on seeing. If you do want to visit the many more temples here, i would suggest staying for at least 1 week. To be honest i doubt i could have convinced the boys to have another day of temple exploring!

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