I’m leaving Siem Reap tonight and it’s a good thing. If I stayed here any longer this place would kill me!! The beer is only 50 cents and I’ve been out every night and getting in at about 6am. I met this insane group of Brits who have been destroying my liver pretty solidly with a crazy amount of drinking games I’ve never heard of before. There’s a huge hostel with a rooftop bar called Sunset, and every night it’s packed out with backpackers gone wild. This place is awesome. 🙂
In my off-time between benders, I’ve been tuktuking round the enormous Angkor complex. It is incredible, seriously an impressive feat of design and construction. Since it’s the low season there are hardly any people around and I got some wicked photos.
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| Front entrance to Angkor Wat |
The one bummer about this place is that there isn’t any information at the temple locations. No signs, no helpful handouts, nothing. There are guys hawking this book that explains everything very well, but I didn’t need a whole book about Angkor Wat. I did manage to get a guy to drop the price from $27 to $2.50, so not too bad. 😛
I hired a tuktuk for the day with my good mate Andre who saved my life at the border. He is brilliant, a real low-key type of traveller, easy to hang out with. It only cost $12 for the guy to take us round all day, and he turned out to be really cool, giving us the full tour-guide experience at each of the locations. He was actually more informative than the Angkor National Museum that we went to….
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| I was there!! – at Angkor Wat |
I’ve also decided that I need a fancier camera. I have a really good point-and-shoot, but I can’t quite get the true feel of the amazing sights I’m looking at, and with the smaller sized sensors in the compact cameras the photos take on a much more 2D feel than with a more professional camera. I also spend a lot of time post-processing in Picasa to get the shots looking like that. I’m looking at the Sony NEX-5N, the reviews on it are fantastic.
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| Preah Khan |
There were some amazing ruins at Ta Keo with these huge trees growing over the rocks. They start out as a tiny little seed dropped up the top, and then over hundreds of years they shoot out massive roots all the way to the ground – incredible.
At every temple there were people selling rubbings of the stones, or bracelets, or incense etc, but there were also a couple of guys doing very beautiful paintings. If I had somewhere to put it or go home to, I would have definitely bought one.
It’s 6pm, and I’ve finally stopped feeling hungover from last night. I’m on the midnight bus to Phnom Penh and not a moment too soon. It’s $10, but I’ll save on paying for accommodation for tonight.
Life is good.
