Wat to see around Siem Reap

SMOTH – It’s hard to imagine what the first French missionary thought when he cut his way through the jungle to see the ancient cities and temples of Angkor. The Cambodian legend posited the buildings were constructed by a race of giants, centuries before Western civilization took interest in the country. While this may seem an unlikely tale now, the missionary, standing under the ornately carved towers of rock at Angkor Wat, probably didn’t think so.

When Bonky and I began planning this trip, I was adamant about one thing — I wanted to see the Angkor Wat. From pictures in National Geographic to building it in video games, I’d always taken an interest in the ancient temple, the largest religious structure in the world. But what I didn’t know was just how varied the sites of Angkor were. The famous Wat was only a small part.

After buying the grossly overpriced three day pass, Bonky and I began planning our Angkor itinerary. Our first stop was a sunset sojourn up a hill to see Phnom Bakheng, a temple built in the late 10th century, and famed for its beauty at sunset. Unfortunately, when I say famous I MEAN famous — it seemed that every able bodied tourist in Siem Reap climbed the hill to snap selfies in front  of Phnom Bakheng as the sun sank. Bonky and I found ourselves elbowing through crowds, and shouting over the din. Altogether it was rather demystifying. While still beautiful, the experience was somewhat tainted — would all subsequent temples be like that?

Sunset at Phnom Bakheng

The temple an countryside

The fields below

The crowds

From afar

The only way to not get tourists in your shot

Thankfully, when we bicycled out to Angkor Wat early in the morning, we found the crowds noticeably thinner. I had high expectations for this temple, and they were all met handily. It doesn’t quite feel real, staring at bas reliefs carved a thousand years before, less than 6 kilometers from a town where I can buy $2 elephant-patterned pants and snake brandy. It’s a bit like stepping back in time, albeit joined by about 1000 other tourists. The towers and temples inside Angkor Wat rival any architecture I’ve seen from Europe in any period. It was a bit mindblowing, and well worth the wait in our trip to see. But what to do after you’ve seen THE Angkor Wat? What could possibly compare? Luckily the Angkor region had a few more wonders in store for us.

Temple tower

The back of Angkor Wat

Smoth

Damged artwork

Bas Relief

Buliding in Wat complex

Long hallway

Obligatory Angkor selfie

Fields in front of Wat

Bonky and a Bas relief

Walkway across the moat

Smoth

Angkor translates as “Great,” and while Wat means temple, Thom means city. And the Angkor Thom was a great city indeed. Our day started there early, this time in a Tuk Tuk, where I promptly made friends with a thirsty monkey. Inside the city proper were numerous temples including the famous Bayon with its face carvings, as well as palatial buildings and pools. It was very rich with history and we both left utterly exhausted after seeing as much of Angkor Thom as we reasonably could in our travel-frayed states.

Thirsty monkey

Head at Bayon

Apsara artwork

Bayon tower

Looking out

Awesome shot by Bonky

Look at that temple!

Bayon

Bonky the martial artist

Our last temple seeing day took us farther afield to some temples left less well restored. Rather. than detract from their beauty, the encroaching jungle merely augmented it. The most famous of these was Ta Prohm, brought to prominence when it was used as the set for the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. While a bit smaller and busier than other places we’d been, seeing the stone buildings being reclaimed by the trees made us feel rather small. It was definitely an awesome way to cap off our temple time.

Posin’

Hallway

Tree vs. building

Taking over

Bonky dwarfed by tree

Temple at Ta Prohm

Filling the cracks

The ruins

Sure, they’re overrun by tourists now. But the ancient temples and structures at Angkor are still among the most awe inspiring things we’ve seen on this trip. If you’ve got an appreciation for art and architecture this is an absolute must see, even if it’s half a globe away. It was the cherry on top of our amazing Cambodian journey.

 

 

 

Four Days, Three Nights on Koh Rong Samloem

BONKY — As most will hopefully fail to realize, the title of this post is a homage to the exceedingly bad 1998 film ‘Six days, Seven Nights.’ While this over-sexualized, campy film is nothing more than proof that ‘Ross from Friends’ should never act, it nevertheless made our list of ‘stranded on a deserted island’ films to watch while holing up in a rustic bungalow on one of this island’s nearly empty beaches. And like Harrison Ford (who for some reason agreed to act in this film), our island stay had some pretty eventful nights.

A two hour ferry took us from the garbage-strewn beaches of Cambodia’s Sihanoukville to the white sand shore of Koh Rong Samloem. Shielded by the curving, hilly landscape of the island, wind is practically absent from the main bay, making our arrival at the pier startling calm as we pulled up through the glassy, turquoise water. As we unloaded ourselves and our bags from the boat any looked out at this island paradise, covered by more jungle than civilization, and whose shores seamlessly melted into the ocean, we thought to ourselves: ‘I can’t believe we are going to get to spend four days here.’

And we weren’t. Our temporary abode was still a little whiles off.

Feeling thankful that we had left our big backpacks back in Sihanoukville, we began our trek through the jungle to the other side of the island where we had booked our accommodation for three nights. The first half of the trek was deceiving – a flat, well-maintained path that seemed like nothing more than a casual nature walk through a park. Then the incline started. At first it appeared the trail maker had attempted to ease the steep incline by winding the trail back and forth, allowing us to cling onto nearby trees for support as our feet shakily attempted to grip onto muddy rocks. As the path headed back down the mountain the trail maker had clearly given up as the homestretch was a straight ascent down a rocky hill, scattered with mangled flip flops who had met their fate on this treacherous route.

As we reached sea level after almost an hour trek, the jungle gave way to a completely empty beach whose waters, while still the saturated blue of our starting point, were rushed toward the shore by the wind, folding into choppy, foaming waves. With less than half a dozen occupied bungalows on shore, this area felt deserted. Settled into the hammocks our wooden bungalow overlooking the capricious sea, we knew we had found the Robinson Crusoe experience we were looking for. The rest of our days were spent eating, swimming, reading, napping placed on repeat. We even had a colorful gecko named Francis as our roommate to fight off the bugs and keep us company. The nights, however, were a little more interesting.

Night One: Night one promised to blend perfectly with our days of relaxation. We watched the sunset over the horizon before heading back in  darkness to our candlelit bungalow. Hot from the days heat, without a fan to keep us cool we headed to the ocean. While in the city the moon is no more than ornament in the night’s sky, on our island it acted us an invaluable guide to navigate our way down the steps of our cabin to the shore. The waters now calm, we watched the stars light up over the tree tops before heading to bed.

Sune

Beach Selfie

Night Two: As far as we knew night two was uneventful. But as we slept, others did not. We woke up the next morning to grab breakfast when I noticed something missing. Being close to the only ones around, we slept soundly with the door and window open to let in the breeze. But what was missing was not from within our cabin, but at the foot of it – our beloved Tevas. Both pairs of our loyal, scrappy sandals seemed to have disappeared into thin air. We spent the morning wandering around the beach (careful not to walk into any of the land mine areas), and contemplated the identity of our midnight thief. The next day one of the staff members told us his Tevas had been taken too. To make matters worse, Francis was also gone.

Night Three: Having woken up at six that day, we forwent the nightly swim to catch an early sleep. Tevaless and geckoless we were anxious to return to mainland the next morning. We entered the bungalow after dinner, with nothing but a flashlight for light. We were stumbling around trying to collect our things for bed when the beam fell on a place beside the door, revealing a hairy, menacing spider the size of Smoth’s hand. We froze.

“Should we kill it”
“No!”
“What should we do?”
“I don’t know!”

I scrambled quickly into bed, taking shelter under the mosquito net while Smoth finished getting ready, keeping an eye on our new roommate. A few seconds later, a large shadow swooped into the room through the front door close to Smoth’s head – a bat had entered the bungalow. Now the room was getting a bit full. In a few seconds it had flown out but nevertheless Smoth decided to take shelter with me in case we had another visitor.

Nervously, we huddled under the sheets and set up another island movie to end the night. We tried to enjoy the film but the restlessness had yet to settle. Just as we began to be engrossed by a Harrison Ford versus pirate fight scene, Smoth turned to me and slowly said “what is that…” I looked up, and by the light of the tablet I could just make out a water bottle sized mass that was weighing down the top of our mosquito net near our heads. Like a Christmas Carol, our third and final nightly visitor had arrived.

“I can’t look!” I said, hiding my face under the sheets. Bravely, Smoth turned the light of the tablet up toward this mysterious creature.

He paused.

“It’s Francis!” he said.

I turned over. Sure enough, there was Francis’ large speckled belly and signature stunted tail hanging over our heads. Beside him was the cricket he had been lunging for before ending up on our mosquito net. Eventually he scuttled back to the wall, continuing his nightly hunt and we settled back into the movie feeling safe again. While we never got our Tevas back and were forced to hike back to the pier in our flip flops, we arrived in Sihanoukville feeling satisfied with our experience. Tired of having small animals flung at our heads, we were comfortable in our air conditioned, WiFi-accessible room as we fell asleep. The next day we were to continue onto Siem Reap for more adventures, but I cannot say it was without a tinge of remorse that we lay in bed, without our loyal friend Francis to watch over us.

Killing Time in Kampot: Our Favourite Place in SE Asia

Bonky-After three months of non-stop traveling, we did not think we could find a place that could surpass the vibrant rice terraces of Sapa or the quaintness of Luang Prabang – especially not in a small riverside town whose fixture was a statue of a giant durian. But after a weeklong stay in Kampot, Cambodia, neither of us wanted to leave.

Our hotel was situated on the edge of town – a short bike ride away from a small fishing village populated with more chickens and ducks than people, and a lazy walk down the riverside away from enjoying a view of Kampot’s infamous Franken-bridge, precariously cobbled together from several bridges or eating a fluffy pumpkin spice pancake in the morning in the town. Though the town has all the charm and natural beauty of Luang Prabang, it is without the hordes of tourists flooding the streets, or the pestering tuktuk drivers forever parked outside your guesthouse.

Cheap motorbike prices allowed us to rent one for the week – though its conditioned certainly seemed to match the price tag. We weren’t sure how old this little machine was since the mileage meter broke at 260 000 km, but after several minutes of patient encouragement, the stubborn engine would eventually start and allow us to putt through the streets of decaying French buildings renovated into cafes and restaurants. I even gave it a spin around the block a couple times with instruction from Smoth but soon decided I was better off as a passenger.

While thankfully for us Cambodia is a fairly flat country where the worry of being flung off a mountain by a crazy bus driver is closer to non-existent than other areas of our trip, our first day trip saw us up one of the several mountains surrounding Kampot – Bokor . To my understanding, some billionaire has bought this old French resort town to renovate into a major tourist attraction complete with a casino. But while that dream waits to come to fruition, the road leading up to the top of the mountain has been paved and maintained into the most beautiful road we’ve seen thus far. The winding climb brought cooler temperatures and a view that stretched over the ocean. The summit was a mixture of dilapidated remnants of the previous resort – from an old church to an abandoned casino – and new development sites whose extravagance seems a little optimistic. At this point, the unpopulated area is more like an eerie abandoned amusement park than a promising enterprise.

Another day brought us through rural Cambodia to the Oceanside town of Kep. Palm trees stretched over the vibrant green rice fields toward the mountains as we made our way to the ocean to grab a plate of fresh crab  seasoned with some famous Kampot pepper. We returned to Kep a few days later to enter the national park, which has a trail wrapping around the edge of a mountain. A tip from the park’s security guard allowed us to bring our trusty motorbike along the path so that the day we imagined of solid hiking through the wildness turned into a bumpy bike ride along the empty, rocky path – we have gotten pretty lazy at this point in the trip…

 

This week was filled with a million other activities like me trying to taste every single brownie in town (I have them ranked on a list now) or going to the local zoo so that Smoth could (allegedly) see an elephant for the first time. Of course we didn’t need to go to the zoo to see wildlife we discovered as soon as I realized that the pack of weird dogs I saw running down the street was actually a tame family of monkeys. Soon enough, our time in Kampot slipped past without us hardly noticing. Though we continue our journey onward our minds constantly turn back to this small town and wish for an opportunity to one day return.