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Cambodia travelogue: Angkor temples small tour
Our driver is waiting for us in front of the hotel at 8.30 as expected for this first day visiting the great Angkor temples. We chose to start with the small circuit, a 17 km loop.
And the first temple of the day is the biggest and most famous one: Angkor Wat which means monastery capital. Angkor Wat, dedicated to Vishnu god, was built in 12th century by king Suryavarman II. We spent two hours watching the amazing bas reliefs, the impressive structures, hanging around in the numerous passageways and paying attention to the sweet reflexions in the hhuge moats surrounding Angkor Wat. After two hours we were far from having explored the entire temple yet, we decided to move on to another one as we knew we'll come back to Angkor Wat the day after for sunset.
Outside, tens of tuk-tuk drivers are peacefully waiting for their "clients" making it uneasy to spot the right one at first sight. We finally succeed in finding Mr Na, our driver, who takes us to the next temple, Bayon, palace of Indra god, where we spent one hour contemplating the high towers decorated with enigmatic giant smiling faces and the bas-reliefs.
Then we continued to a smaller temple, Chau Say Tevoda and Thommanon. What is interesting here is to compare the two temples which are only separated by the road. One, Thommanon, has recently been restored while the other, Chau Say Tevoda is about to be. We clearly see the huge amount of work that is to be done to obtain the same result. Meanwhile, the sun is heating pretty hard as we head to Ta Kev temple(or Ta keo). The main characteristics of this temple are a massive and impressive aspect making the climb very difficult, and also, very seldom in Khmer art, its incompletion state.
We drink a lot to compensate the sweating but we are not hungry so we keep on going to Ta Prohm a temple totally invaded by nature. It is very beautiful and amazing. We finally reach Banteay Kdei and Srah Srang which are located at the end of the loop.
It is 3pm when we come back to the hotel. We go straight to the swimming pool to refresh then decide to hang aroung in the cool market passageways. After dinner we can't help trying traditional cambodian massage, a MUST after such an exhausting day!