Days 127 – 128: Siem Reap

Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059206&l=19eaa&id=1101094

I caught a mid-morning bus to Siem Reap the following day, taking special care not to end up on the same type of bus that I’d been on for the last two trips. That wasn’t very hard to do, considering the Phnom Penh to Siem Reap route is the most popular in the country for both locals and tourists. I ended up on something akin to a Greyhound and slept for most of the six hour journey.

At the bus station in Siem Reap I got my first taste of aggressive tuk tuk drivers since India. As the bus pulled into the station, the drivers sprinted alongside the bus waving signs for their services, and by the time the bus had come to a full stop the tuk tuk driver sea outside the bus door was at least 50 people thick. We walked down the bus steps into a tangle of groping arms, sweaty bodies, and paper signs. I’d forgotten how much I missed India.

I found a tuk tuk driver from the guesthouse at which I planned to stay and caught a free ride into town. On the way I negotiated with the driver to take me around to the Temples of Angkor the following day. I’d hoped to rent a motorbike and explore the temples on my own, but apparently tourists have been in so many wrecks in and around Siem Reap that the local government banned motorbike rental for foreigners. Given that it was Siem Reap, the package tourist capital of Southeast Asia, I wasn’t surprised.

I agreed to meet my driver the following morning at 5:30 so I could catch the sunrise over the temples, and then I went into town for some overpriced Thai food before turning in early for the night.

Sunrise over Angkor Wat was indeed spectacular (as was the temple itself, which is the largest religious building in the world), but it was hard to enjoy given the thousands of tourists that were crawling all over the thing. At least when I visited the Taj Mahal at sunrise I had the place mostly to myself; here, I was in a tourist city. The causeway that led to the temple itself was so crowded that I had to wait my turn to climb the steps. I felt like I was back in Times Square.

Apparently, all the package tourists go for breakfast right after watching the sun rise at Angkor Wat, so I deliberately skipped breakfast and headed to the second most popular temple, Bayon. My strategy worked—I was one of only about ten people at the site. As I was leaving I saw the tour buses pulling up and breathed a sigh of relief.

I’ll pause for a quick history of the temples at Angkor—they were built between the 9^th and 13^th Centuries by the Cambodian devaraja (god-kings), they number in the hundreds, and they’re spread out around Siem Reap, though the most famous are clustered due north of the city. Though the whole site is often called “Angkor Wat,” in reality Angkor Wat is just the most famous of the temples.

Later in the day I visited Preah Khan, Ta Keo, and Ta Prohm, the last of which was used to shoot the film Tomb Raider. I’ll leave descriptions of the temples to my photos. Overall, the temples were impressive, though perhaps not quite impressive enough to justify all the hype. The jungle setting adds to the mystique, but it’s tough to feel like you’re stumbling upon ruins in the jungle when you’re walking along a swept trail with hundreds of foreign companions. I actually got a sharper tingle down my spine during the approach to Machu Picchu.

By the end of the day I was all templed out, and I bought a boat ticket to a town called Battambang, where I was guaranteed to find far fewer tourists. Then again, I could have taken a boat (bus, train, plane) just about anywhere and achieved that goal.