Ancient Angkor — Any Given Country

Getting off the plane and walking towards the arrival hall, a warm breeze welcomed us to one of my all time favorites: Siem Reap. Having said that it’s been about 13 years since I was here last and I was curious and anxious at the same time to see how it had changed.

We were picked up by Po, our tuktuk driver for our 6 days in Cambodia. We had a blast being driven to our hotel on our “Cambodian uber”.

Tuktuking through the city, Siem Reap already revealed it’s new face: easy to get and super cheap local sim cards, neon-lit street called ‘The Pub Street’ which reminded me painfully of Phuket’s tourist quarter, lots of shops, expensive looking hotels, and wide roads - and in between still those smiley and kind faces I remembered so well.

We started off with a Vespa food tour (www.vespaadventures.com) on our first evening, which I can strongly recommend you do. Not only because you are zipping through town on a Vespa – and yes, I needed a lot of self control to not take over and drive myself… - but also because you get introduced to the lesser known bars, restos and taken out of the tourist areas to local markets where you can taste EVERYTHING the locals eat. I passed on most of the silkworms and frogs but Todd was trying it all (!) - read more here.

Rise and shine at 4:30 am the following morning to get our 3-day pass – with about 200 other early bird visitors... Next to the normal crowd, the annual half-marathon around the ancient temples also took place on that day so we ended walking towards Angkor Wat with about 2,000 others and blaring techno music... Not quite how I described Todd this magical place.

Before exploring the temples away from the running route, I wanted to see if I could take a sunrise picture of Angkor Wat. Well, it ended up being a recon trip and a coffee stop instead, so I knew for the other morning where to bully myself to get a good picture. It was crazy how many people were there: Tour groups of Chinese who seemed to have a competition about who has the longer selfie-stick in order to get the best shot, next to more serious photographers in the front row at the lake hovering over their cameras.

To ‘digest’ that sight we let ourselves be whisked away from one of the many ladies who sell their coffee next to the lake – yes, they have coffee stands within Angkor Wat.

You can tell that by now I was pretty sobered up from my romantic memory and was expecting to be surrounded by hordes of selfie-stick-holding-tourists that were on a tight schedule to snap away their ‘ihavebeenthere’ pictures.

Thanks to Po I would be proven wrong – he knew where to go early in the morning to beat the crowds, to enjoy that special magic ancient Angkor has: you hear the sounds of the jungle around you, the birds and crickets joining in their morning serenade, while you walk towards one of the impressive and beautiful stone-faced gates that are half fallen apart because of Tetrameles trees taking back their territory.

We enjoyed it thoroughly to explore, rest and gaze in awe at these beautiful old temples.