Warsaw to Bangkok

Angkor was a city the size of New York, with a population of one million. The site sprawls, but the main ruins are within easy biking range of Siem Reap, the tourist trap town where you stay. In fact, bicycling gives you a little bit of down time in between the sites (and touts).

The first monument you come to is Angkor Wat. Justifiably famous as the world’s largest religious building, Angkor Wat was constructed in the mid-12th century under the patronage of King Suryanvarman II. It is a grand combination of scale and detail. The approach is several hundred metres long and it needs to be to allow the visitor to take it all in – Angkor Wat is 1.5km wide, with towers up to 65m high. The use of scale was also evident in the stairs – they are twice as high as a normal step (even mine) and very steep. You don’t just walk up – you climb. You are supposed to remember this!

Inside, details are everywhere. Carvings of Hindu myth line the outer walls for the temple (as opposed to the temple’s outer wall). These amount to a few kilometres of intricately carved scenes of demons, gods, soldiers and battles. Other carvings and inscriptions are all over the Wat. Amazingly, despite the hordes of tourists, Angkor Wat is so big you can easily find your own quiet corner.

Next is the hilltop Phnom Bakheng, which is on the whole a standard Ankgorian structure only noteworthy for its views. There are many smaller ruins that don’t attract the same crowds as the Big Four. One I liked was Baksei Chamkrong, the area’s only pyramid (more like a ziggurat to me), with a tower on top.

From there, I entered the walled city of Angkor Thom. Mainly jungle at first, it gives way to many ruins, chief amongst which is the Bayon.

The Bayon is much smaller than Angkor Wat but receives as many tourists so you’ve got to time this one to get the full effect. It is famous for its many towers, which are adorned with faces on all sides. Design-wise, it is the antithesis of Angkor Wat’s epic scale and right angles. The Bayon is humble yet impressive – a beautiful granite labyrinth of faces and prayer rooms. Getting lost in its depths is incredible fun, and it was relatively empty when I visited it so it was a real pleasure to explore.

After lunch – a trying ordeal of screaming touts and aggressive saleskids who ought to be in school – I headed down the “Small Circuit”. This took me to the Thommanon – a minor ruin of aquamarine mosses, dark passageways and approachable scale. It was one of my favourites.
I stopped briefly at a couple of others before visiting Ta Phrom, another of the Big Four. Ta Phrom is great fun – the French left it alone for the most part so it is still “one with the forest”. Trees grow out of the walls, their roots twisting around the stones. The ruins are large, and there are many amazing examples of the forest and the ruins evolving into a symbiotic interdependency. Gorgeous.

The afternoon waning, I visited another ruin, the Srah Sreng, one of the reservoirs used by the Angkorians. This is quite large, but pales in comparison with the two main reservoirs, one of which is still over half full.

At this point, I was templed-out and more importantly touted-out. At each monument, vendors scream and shout at every foreigner within earshot. This incessant bludgeoning of my eardrums I find to be extremely rude and it did a lot of damage to my impressions of Cambodian people. I could rant a while on this, and on how they exploit their children, and much more but I’ll save it. Let’s just say it was the worst example of human rudeness and greed I’ve ever seen. And I spent two months in China.

The next day I tackled the Big Circuit. This is longer, but with half of it overlapping the Small Circuit I had less to see. I wanted to return to the Bayon, but it was utter bedlam there so I figured I wouldn’t get the same feeling from the place that I did the day before. I proceeded directly to the last of the Big Four, Preah Khan. Part Bayon, part Ta Phrom, this rambling, photogenic complex hides behind an unassuming facade but delivers big time inside. Ancient gardens, Bayonic mazes, altars, jungle vines…I spent a couple of hours poking around Preah Khan.

This was followed by Banteay Prei, a small ruin with tiny Hobbit doors. Neak Pean followed. This is a series of pools, some still with water, and a small monument in the middle. The steps going down to the water evoked in my mind the Labi Hauz in Bukhara. Neak Pean was undoubtedly a social gathering place and it was great to close my eyes and imagine the bustle that must have been.

A few more temples, much quiet bike riding, a troop of roadside monkeys and that was my Angkor experience. When I stopped to take pictures of the monkeys, one of them hopped on my bike and tried to abscond with my water bottle. I bought a cd from some musicians that play around the many temples. They lend great atmosphere to the place.

The next day I took a hell-ride to Bangkok. Shoehorned into an airport shuttle, bags piled to the ceiling, a group of us were bounced along something approximating a road for 8 1/2 hours to the border. Ridiculously, we were 48km from the border town of Poipet 4 hours out but the bus company decided to use another border crossing 200km away. Because, after all, you can never spend too much time in the middle of Cambodian nowhere.

We changed buses after crossing the border. The bus in Thailand was quite roomy and plush by any standard. It was a good thing, because the driver reckoned the highway was a good place to drive 60kph. Oh, and you know you’ve been in the backwoods of Asia too long when the driver goes along on the left side of the road and you don’t even notice for two hours until someone points out that they drive backwards like the English here. I just laugh thinking about the first time, back in Uzbekistan, when the driver rode on the wrong side and how frazzled I got. I can’t believe that’s normal for me now.