From Ho Chi Minh City (AKA Saigon), we crossed the border into Cambodia and, after spending three days in Phnom Penh, we headed out to the temples of Angkor... This page has pictures from the week we spent in Cambodia.
You can view these pictures as a slideshow here. (This link opens a new browser window. This may be a problem if you have a pop-up blocker installed.)
Phnom Penh is a pleasant little town, very sleepy in comparison to Saigon or even Hanoi. (But a step up in price, surprisingly.) We spent 3 days here & Phil spent most of it in bed with a fever. Myself & Olly spent our time watching the Euro 2004 tournament and visiting the sites - I can recommend the excellent National Museum.
The ferry upriver from Phnom Penh took about 5 hours and was so hot everyone had to lie down on the roof. We passed lots of shanty town like this.
That polystyrene box was full of Cokes, Fantas and raw fish.
It was quite a task simply getting to Siem Riep - the nearest town to the temples. It really is in the middle of the jungle.
This was the first temple we visited, and definitely one of my favourites.
These pictures don't do the reality justice. To anyone thinking of going: Do it and thank me later.
For three days we cycled from dawn to dusk in sweltering heat from one temple to another.
There are over 2,000 of these smiling faces, each with the same eerie smile. A very atmospheric place.
Unfortunately the whole place is close to falling apart & not much is really being done to ensure its' survival - despite the massive entrance fee.
The temples are all full of this type of bas-relief.
We got up at 4am and took a taxi to the main temple complex at Angkor so that we could catch the sunrise. As you can see, the colours in the sky just before the sun appeared were fantastic.
The stuff that dreams are made of.
The palace/temple had some of the most amazing bas-relief friezes I've ever seen. In fact, this temple has the longest running bas-relief in the world. In any other country these would have been hacked out and installed in a museum.
... And all of a sudden the sky became grey and dull once again. But the absence of tourists made it a very special morning and worth the early start for that reason alone. I'll never forget the way the mist hung above the jungle like that.
I was quite unprepared for the massive scale of the place - it makes Trafalgar Square look like a village green!
This was taken at the end of our third full day of temple-spotting. As you can see, despite their splendour, there was a certain amount of fatigue setting in.
I think Phil would have killed me if I'd suggested visiting another temple at this point.
This is one of the most-photographed temples at Angkor, largely because it's been almost completely taken-over by the jungle. All the other temples have been cleared, but this has been kept as it was found.
Apparently they filmed Tomb Raider here. If they didn't, they should have.
I have to say that walking around this temple gave me goose-bumps. I'd love to go back.
Incredible what the jungle has done to the place.
I think the doorway on the right features on the front cover of last year's Lonely Planet Cambodia. Yes, we did see the old guy also on the cover hanging around.
She really didn't want to photographed, so I had to pretend I was interested in the tree.
It's only a matter of time before the whole place falls down.
Strange the way these trees have so effortlessly pushed aside so many tons of stone.
In addition to those above, there are about 50 major temple complexes around Angkor. We visited around a dozen of them.
Many of favourite temples were hidden away & difficult to locate - even with a map. At many of them, we were the only people around.
Apparently the Khmer Rouge to break the heads off statues and flog them whenever they needed a new rocket-launcher.
The ever-present touts fulfilled a very useful function - supplying us with cold water and Cokes every few hours kept us on our feet.
God, she was depressed.
This temple was absolutely enormous.
More of Shiva - presented in his form as the cosmic dancer. "'He is believed to be the source of all movement within the cosmos, and so his dancing is what makes the world go round. The dance is said to be performed in a sacred place called 'Chidabaram', the center of the universe, which is in reality within the human heart." There you go.
This was our journey to and from the temples every day. Thankfully the elephants & monkeys kept off the road.
Many outlying temples such as this one were out-of-bounds for tourists for many years, due to the presence of land-mines. Thankfully, this is no longer a serious problem - although it's still risky to venture far from the paths.
Many of the temples were fantastic to look at around sunset, when the light turns the stonework a brilliant red.
