12.01.2017 - Jordan

 

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The famous city of temples! Three amazing days.

Angkor is a huge area mixing nature and constructions built between the IX and XIV century, from the Khmer empire. And when I say huge, I mean that we travelled 50 km by bike during our first day, to visit just a part of the ‘Big tour'.

 

 

Day 1:
The entry ticket for 3 days is $40, rather expensive, but it is really worth it! (Also, the price will increase up soon: almost double its actual value).

Willing to be free of our movements and to not follow the desires and prices of tuk-tuks drivers, we rented bikes. Which turned out to be a great choice! The first day, we visited most of the ‘small’ temples and constructions. And luckily, we met very few other tourists!
Angkor is known for being the capital of the kingdom Khmer, which ran a large part of South Asia, and where up to 1 million habitants lived at its peak.

We began our visit quite late, around 11 o’clock, with the lake of Srah Srang. In real life it's more a pool: it’s not natural and with a completely rectangular shape. Khmer empire and people are impressive: they liked creating gigantic things.

We continued then by the magnificent ‘Pre Rup', a temple with warm colors. The orange/red stones of Pre Rup makes it beautiful (they have lost the stucco covering them). Steps to get to the peaks of each construction are incredibly stiff (it should not be easy to access to the Gods land). And the views of the surrounding nature, when being at the top of the temple is incredible.

After a short picnic next to East Melon, another temple, we headed towards the pool surrounding ‘Neak Pean'. It's a beautiful lake with a bunch of dead trees as far as your eyes can see. It's impressive to say that all of this was created by Khmers.

 

The end of our afternoon was a race against time to get back on Pre Rup temple: we wanted to see the sunset at its top. It wasn’t magic in fact, especially because we were surrounded by hundreds of tourists that we were too, but the whole day we didn’ meet anybody!
 

 

Day 2
Mega motivated, we biked the 15 miles that separate our guest house from the first temple of Angkor, at 5.30 in the morning. This is how we were able to take our breakfast while seeing the sunrise over the lake of Srah Srang (visited the day before). After having enjoyed, and worn out the batteries of our cameras, we visited the temple Ta Prohm. Probably one of the most beautiful, with just few people at this time (7.30).

 

The Temple has been completely absorbed by the nature, which gives it a special charm. Massive trees grow on the rocks, and use the ramifications of their roots to cover everything. We all loved this temple!

But the day took a slightly different turn when one of Sixtine’s tire went flat. We had to change our plans to find a guy able to fix it with a patch. Finally, there were 6-7 local people caring about it, all of them trying to give their opinion, but usually it’s the job of a single guy!

So, because we were looking to fix this flat tire, we ended up in front of the ’Bophon', another temple, amazing and massif. The Bophon has many peaks, with on each of them four gigantic faces, one at each cardinal point.

Day 3 to come on the next article!