Today was always going to be special and so it proved. We have both been looking forward to seeing the world famous Angkor Wat as part of this tour and it was definitely worth the wait.
It’s a glorious place, comprising the grandeur and harmony of fabulous architecture and definitely lives up to the hype.
It truly is a lost city in the middle of the Cambodian jungle.
Its scale is hard to comprehend being almost 9sq km.
The ‘lost city’ comprises various temple sites, Angkor Wat being the most famous, established in the 12th century then comprising of over 1 million people, which at that time represented c. 0.1% of the world’s population.
The Hindu/Buddhist temple is the largest religious structure in the world and as you walk into the grounds it has a celestial feel despite the years of neglect and its most recent 20th century restoration.
In truth my words won’t do the place justice, so instead I will let the pictures do the work instead.
After 3hrs touring around Angkor Wat we moved on to one of the lesser known temple sites, Bayon which has seen more deterioration as a result of his original building design and structure. Its stand out feature was its 4 sided heads that used to sit on every tower looking out in all directions. Today only a few of the weathered faces remain, but of those that do it’s still a reminder of the wonderful skill and design of the Khmer empire sculptures and artists.
After a busy morning, we had a short break at local restaurant looking out across one of the moats around Bayon and we relaxed with a cool lager from our friends at Cambodian beer.
Having seen the splendour of Cambodians past, our afternoon visit to a floating town on Lake Tonie Sap showed us the other side of the country and its struggles with poverty and poor hygiene.
Sadly due to limited rainfall the river’s water level was very low and this magnified the struggles the local people have with limited recycling, meaning much of their waste making its way back into the river. This meant for great mounds of plastic bottles washing up on the banks.
Our river cruise wasn’t quite what we expected and served to highlight the country’s struggles with balancing tourism demands against the people’s basic wants and needs.
Once back at the hotel, we had a relaxing late afternoon and made a visit to a local bakery for coffee and cakes. We’re pleased to report that both were excellent and a pleasant reminder of some of the ‘home comforts’ we miss.
We had a pleasant dinner with Shaun, our fellow Brit traveller at a nearby Cambodian restaurant, before retiring to bed at 10am in readiness for a 4.30am start tomorrow and a return visit to Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise.
@travellingwiththeateam 