We left the hotel at 5am to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat the next morning, having only an hour or two of sleep, which was amazing. (The temple was amazing, not us. We looked like shit.)
It’s a truly beautiful temple, massive in size and well-preserved, and we sat on the stone step ruins of the Angkor Wat library watching the shadows slowly life to reveal the stone detail.
It started raining shortly after, which was even better, as the thousands of tourists dissappeared into their coaches and we had some space to wander, climb and explore this sacred sit on our own. Two things pissed us off though – two girls in singlet tops and short shorts wandering around, which was so disrespectful, and a Christian group who were actually holding mass within the temple, the pastor wearing his robes and everything. We stopped in the middle and stared incredulously at them, saying ‘Buddist, people, this is a Buudist temple. Seriously! Do monks go into the Vatican to worship? Seriously.’ We realised later that’s it’s Easter. But still, seriously.
After our healthy dose of temples, we ate breakfast on site, visited the landmine museum and slept in the afternoon, where we ate lunch, visited the markets and went to the hospital to donate blood, where we got a whole box of orange cookies afterwards. Each. That hospital rocks.
That night, we had cocktails at the Angkor What? bar – which has written on the blackboard behind the bar “This is not a tourist information centre, so shut up and drink.” So we did.
-Sarah
Sarah