Angkor W(h)at?

For everyone who doesn´t know what on earth that is: it´s the greatest religious region in the whole world, around 200km^2 big and including over 1000 temples. There are plenty “main cities” found within the area, each with it´s own main temple. Angkor Wat is the greatest and the most famous one of all, since it´s the greatest Temple complex in the world.

The first temple in Angkor was built around the 10th century, under Khmer administration, even though that changed around the 13th century, when the Thai grew stronger and took over Angkor Wat, turning it from a Buddhist Temple area into a Hindi one.

But enough with the theory: how does one get there?

We hired a Tuk tuk the day before, that picked us up at out hostels and drove us to and around Angkor. It was about 25$ and the easiest way of getting there. I also saw people going there by bike, which might be fine in the morning - but not during the day when it´s over 35°C.

You unfortunately can´t really walk around there, because the area is huge - and it would take you forever going by feet. Our driver always dropped us before the temple and then picked us up at its other side, which sometimes still was a long way to walk – and definitively enough exercise in the heat.

Anyway, do as you like! After the pick up at the hotel (at 5am, because we wanted to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat), the driver took us to the ticket station, which, as someone might consider, isn´t directly at Angkor.

There are tickets for one, three or seven days available, and I got the one-day ticket, which honestly was enough because even though you didn´t, it feels as if you´ve seen everything after one day.

They have risen the prices for the one-day ticket up to 37$ (that almost made me not go there lol), three days cost 62$ and a week is 72$.

Remember to dress properly! Shoulders and knees have to be covered for visiting the Temples, otherwise you´ll have to buy one of the super expensive shirts (or trousers) at the ticket office - and you really don´t want to spend extra money after just buying the overpriced ticket…

After getting the ticket, we drove to the complex. Didn´t seem to be that crowded at first, but after we walked over the river of Angkor Wat and went through its gate, we saw almost nothing but people. That made it kinda hard to get a good shoot of the sunset over the Temple, but when you got the stamina to make your way through the crowds, the pictures turn out to be quite good :)

We went to the other "main" temples around afterwards, but the most impressive one was the Ta Prohm Temple, better known as the "Tomb Raider" temple, since they made a Lara Croft movie there3.

It´s super impressive, because on the temple walls are growing strangler figs – somehow wrapping their roots around the stones like ghost fingers, which gives the whole temple a spooky any mystic touch. It´s beautiful!

We have thought that we´d spent the whole day at Angkor, but our tour was finished around 2pm, so we were there for about 8 hours – which was clearly enough. First of all, it gets super-hot in Siem Reap in the afternoon, and secondly the temples tend to look all the same after you´ve been there for a while. At least that was my impression!

Guess it only makes sense to get the three- or seven-days ticket, if you really want to see EVERY temple or take pictures of the sunrise AND the sunset. Or just don´t have anything better to do. Or are a photographer who´s really into Temples. Or whatever.

I heard that it´s less crowded in the afternoon, since more people want to see the sunrise than the sunset, because the first one can be watched directly over Angkor Wat, the main Temple, and there isn´t enough pictures of that famous motive yet – so everybody´s gotta take a new one. Don´t really know whether it´s true that there´s less crowds in the afternoon, I just know that the sunrise is totally worth it and getting up at 4 something am for once doesn´t hurt too much :D

Some fun facts we found out at Angkor to finish this: As said before, there were some wars going on between the Khmer and the Thais – so Buddhism and Hinduism. Therefore, Angkor was at first a Buddhist complex, then a Hindu one, then again Buddhist: Due to that, they always had to change the religious artefacts there – e.g. the inscribed drawings on the temple walls. Appears to be way too much stress for me, but the Buddhists for example carved the seated Buddha in the walls, just so that the Hindus rubbed it off a few years later, changed it to one of their gods. When the Buddhists took over Angkor again, they had to scratch Buddha back in the walls. And not only with the carvings, also the statues needed to change! Some Buddhas in Angkor don´t have a head, and I asked one of the guides there why: it was because the Hindus beheaded it and took the head aside or threw it away. All of that fortunately stopped around the 13th century, when Thevara Buddhists made out the major part of the country, since their religion doesn´t request huge Temples etc. Since the new capital of Cambodia was Phnom Penh, Angkor became less important in that period, even though it was used by some kings around the 15th century – and obviously it´s growing back in importance today, since it´s the main attraction everybody going to Cambodia has to see!