Cycling around Angkor
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007The incomparable Ted Chang, who I think has now seen every place among the 21 finalists for the ‘New 7 Wonders’ competition held earlier this year, says the Angkor temples of Cambodia top the lot – the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, Petra, the Great Wall, etc.
That’s a lot of hype to live up to, but Angkor does.
I’ll stop short of making the same declaration while I think about it for a while, but at the very least the Angkor temples are among the top handful of historic places in the world. It’s funny how the entire collection of temples is often refereed to as simply Angkor Wat, when in fact Angkor Wat is just one of many complexes, and for me – and I suspect many others – not even the most enjoyable part.
But back to the start: three mornings ago, we rose at 5am and cycled from Siam Reap to Angkor Wat, which as well as being the most famous temple at Angkor is also the closest at about 6km (about 4mi) away. It seems that about 1000 other people also had the idea of being there at sunrise, which lessened the experience somewhat, but once we got around to the back side of the temple there weren’t many people around and we had the place in relative peace.
We spent the next three days cycling around the temples, covering (I guess) about 80km (50mi) of flat ground in all, which left me pretty exhausted and wondering how our friend Lockie possibly cycles up to 160km a day while riding around the world. Overall, the two main highlights for me were:
– The Bayon temple in the 12th/13th century Angkor Thom complex, with its 54 towers all adorned with four smiling faces (possibly of the contemporary ruler Jayavarman VII). I haven’t seen this sort of architecture before and it’s a very special place – interestingly, experts believe the workmanship here to be somewhat shoddy compared with other temples, but it’s a marvelous sight today.
– The general ‘tree roots meet ruins’ atmosphere that is such a special part of various temple complexes – Preah Khan, Ta Prohm and Ta Som come to mind. It strikes me that I have referred to the opening scene of The Raiders of the Lost Ark rather regularly in blogs and emails over the past few years to describe various temples, but it is no more appropriate than at Angkor, even more so than at the Maya ruins in Mexico and Guatemala. In some cases, trees are literally taking over, and now seem almost to be supporting the very ruins they have breached. The resulting photogenic scenes perfectly conform to the ‘Lost City’ image that has enthralled adventurers and archaeologists for centuries.
Today was a scheduled ‘rest day’ while we recover from our pre-dawn cycling exploits. Cambodia is a small country and aside from this wonderful place it doesn’t have as much to offer as say, Laos, does. That being the case, tomorrow we’ll head to the capital Phnom Penh and start arranging our visas for Vietnam (don’t be jealous Mum, I’m almost positive it won’t be as nice as Laos!).
Some more photos of Angkor are here.
Nick