The best of Tem-pals

Because these temples are the BEST, and we are best pals 😉 Ok well we thought it was cute, you can’t win ’em all.

So the journey to Siem Rep began early on Wednesday morning with our speedboat trip. We had been prewarned to make sure we were well protected with factor 50, what with it being a 6 hour ride. There was an option to sit downstairs, but of course, we didn’t want to do that! What would be the point after all, if you couldn’t do this:

Or see this:

Unfortunately despite my very liberal application of factor 50 i still burnt to a crisp- damn you midday sun! Luckily our hotel had a nice little pool i could cool off my poor pink skin in when we arrived, so you don’t need to feel too sorry for me 😉

Kieran contemplating his memoirs…

That evening i was still suffering so there was only one thing for it….

Pina colada! Don’t judge me. I (now not so) secretly love these. And at $1.50 a pop, who wouldn’t?!
(everything in Cambodia is priced in American dollars instead of the local currency, riel. Not sure why.)

We also met up with our German friends Elizabeth and Felix again! They just can’t get enough!

The girls having a nice gossip whilst the boys get chocolate banana pancakes- a Cambodian delicacy.

We really loved Cambodia- it’s such a beautiful country and the people are just wonderful. But one thing we just couldn’t get on board with is that in Siem Reap there is ‘Pub Street’. It’s basically a street lined with bars and tacky neon lights, and young tourists drinking buckets of cocktails all over the place. I know it’s about the money, and I know that Cambodia needs the money more than most, but it really spoils such a lovely place. Ah still, i guess it’s only one street… When did i get so old?!

Just in case you weren’t sure where it was.

But anyway, onto the main reason we came to Siep Reap. The Temples of Angkor! We decided to do just go for just one day due partly to our budget, and partly because we had heard from a few sources that 3 days was a bit…much. The temples are beautiful, but the coach loads of tourists not so much, and Kieran has quite a low tolerence for crowds 😉 It was also Chinese New Year, so i guess that could go towards explaining the even higher than usual number of visitors. Initially we had wanted to go to Angkor Wat for sunrise, but our German friends advised us against it as they had gotten up at 4.30am the previous morning for the same reason, but due to the mass of people and tripods they could barely see a thing! So we thought we would be clever and switch up the usual order of things to try and beat those crowds…

We began at the Bayon, with its 54 gothic towers decorated with 216 enormous coldly smiling faces. Intimidating stuff.

Just stunning, and not too busy either… Where were all of these horrible crowds we had been warned about?

Oh here they are! All sitting in standstill traffic to get to The Bayon having come from sunrise at Angkor Wat! God we’re good. I’ll now hand you over to Kieran to tell you about the rest of our temple adventure…
Good work Bex, so yeah, we had the idea to visit Angkor Wat second. So, whats there to say? Built by Suryavarnan || it is the earthly representation of Mt Meru (the Hindu Mount Olympus). It is the worlds largest religious building.Its sandstone blocks from which it was built were quarried 50km away and floated down the Stung Siem Reap on rafts! Rafts!

The central tower you can see there rises 31metres above the third level of the building. You have to mount some pretty steep steps to get in there.

If you have vertigo look away now. We spent a good hour or so having a wander round and just taking in the surrounding nature, far from the tuk tuk beeping and noise.
An awful lot of the temples of Angkor have pieces fading and crumbling and in recent years many other countries from India to Germany and Japan have lent their expertise to try and save what they can. In some cases this has meant numbering and re building parts of the temples which , you could say begs the question “is it the same temple?”
Thats for the scholars to answer. By this time it was 11.30 and we were happy to avoid the midday sun and return to base camp. We got a lift back to the hotel and relaxed until our evening sojourn back to the temples.
That afternon then we hit the very popular Ta Phrom “the ultimate indiana jones fantasy”. The location where nature has reclaimed its place amongst the temple ruins with awesome effect.

The geeks amongst us will recognise this location from the first Tomb Raider movie.

You could spend a whole day just at this one place but we were keen to get a decent sunset in.

Kieran listens to the trees….
So, where to go for the sunset? We had debated back and forth and settled finally on Sra Srang, not so much a temple as a bathing pond, an ablutions pool (search me). It was a peaceful spot far from the maddening (literally) crowds. We had a seat by the pool and tried to calculate how long it would take, thought about our time in this beautiful country and our hope that we might return later.

Becky stretching into the sunset.

Tem-pals.
We had enjoyed a lovely day stepping back in time and we found ourselves pretty exhausted by the end of it. Our plan was to rent some bikes Saturday and head south out of town to the paddy fields. We borrow two oul nellies and off we went.

Becky leads the charge.
Now , being an Irishman im used to some bad roads, a couple of potholes. These roads take the biscuit. Our poor bottoms took a right pummelling but we got to see some of the real Khmer people living their lives, kids going to school (on a saturday!) and finally got to these green fields.

On the advice of my cousin Justin i bought a bag of tangerines/mandarins and shared them out with the kids we came across, they were dead chuffed, Bex dubbed me “Mandarin Man”.
Our cycle over we relaxed by the pool (another one, i know) until our late flight to Bangkok where we reside before heading overnight to Ko Tao and scuba diving! Fishes!