Incredible as it seems we woke up 6 minutes before our wakeup call at 3:54am and in swift order got ready for our driver. We also had arranged for a bin of ice towels from the hotel which were waiting for us at the front desk.
This is one of those places that you hear people talk about in reverent tones. Some people spend a week here going to every temple and nook and cranny around Angkor Wat. We arent’t these people. We wanted to see the highlights, were afraid of dying in the heat, and had a flight to catch at 6:00pm so we had a plan and were bound to stick to it.
But wow is this place amazing. If you can ignore the tourist support system, e.g. vendors selling crap, and focus on the actual temples it is a very humbling experience. We took hundreds of photos because the place is that photogenic. I’ll only share a few here, but try to get here at least once in your traveling life it’s really quite something to see.
There are dozens of temples scattered over 154 square miles of jungle. We planned to see four: Angkor Wat, Banteay Sreay, Ta Prom, and Bayon. Turned out we hit the wall after Bayon because the heat just became debillitating and we couldn’t continue (and this is the cool part of the year) so it’s good that’s all we planned to do.
First up was the sunrise at Angkor Wat at the winter solstice. We stood with 5,000 of our closest friends to get this photo. Magical.
Yep, it starts there. And then as soon as the sun has risen above the temple, everyone disperses for their day at the temples. We continued into Angkor Wat since we were right there. The light at this time of the morning was magnificent.
It’s enormous, here are some highlights meant to portray just the favorites. Some night after drinks we’ll haul out the slide projector for the rest. Hah.
Monks come here to pray. We caught these two running down the stairs to meet a friend.
Considering this is high tourist season, it was not terribly crowded.
One more shot of the sunrise at Angkor Wat.
We then took a 25km ride out to the temple on our list that was furthest away, Bantey Sreay. We wanted to go here because it is known as the temple with red sandstone. And indeed it is.
It’s a very small temple, it took perhaps 30 minutes to tour but it was beautiful! The red sandstone got into everything – pants, shoes, socks, shirt but it was worth it!
Then we went to Ta Prom, which is also known as the “Tomb Raider” temple because it is where the film of that name was made. It may look familiar to you for that reason.
Really a mystical, magical place. Our last stop was Bayon, which is a temple located within the larger Angkor Thom and is known for it’s “faces”. They are everywhere in the stonework.
We really had a wonderful day at Angkor Wat, but by noon it was too hot to go on. Plus we had already been at it for 7 hours, so we went back to our suite at the Park Hyatt and took one of the most delicious plunges into a cool pool ever, and spent the afternoon right there waiting for 4pm when we were leaving for the airport for our flight to our next stop, Hanoi.
