Angkor Wat

Arriving to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh by bus was comparable to travelling in North India; on the stops you could buy deep fried spiders and crickets double the size they are in Europe - if at all they live there. On arrival rickshaw drivers almost broke the bus window to be the first choice. Luckily we organized a room from Phnom Penh with a pick-up from the bus, so we thought and let the only driver with the business card with the name of our guesthouse to take us. We did not drive long when we understood that we are victims of an obvious scam; if you do not commit for a whole day ride the following day to visit temples, the ride is not free to the guesthouse. This made it clear that we are sitting on the wrong vehicle and after some fuss we got on two motorbike taxis and arrived to our planned destination.

The same evening we went on a sunset watch trip to Prasat Trapeang Ropou and observed that the best way for us to discover the ruins will be on bicycle. Tomek came up with the idea that the following morning we should start at 4 am in order to be the first to arrive to the main temple of Angkor Wat and see it in the rising sun. After a one hour ride in pitch dark we arrived together with hoards of toursist, none on such a sporty vechicle though... Newertheless the temple was mesmerizing as the first rays of sun gave color to the ancient stones. We were among the first to enter the center piece of the temple, which was hypnotic in its silent peace. We continued our discovery on the so called "small loop", which is a 17 km circle passing by the most important ruins: Angkor Thom with the Bayon, the Terrace of Elephants, Ta Prohm. By 1 pm we felt totally wretced and decided to pedal back to Siem Reap.

On the next day we rented a moto rickshaw to visit Kbal Spean and Banteay Srei, a good 60 km return trip mostly on dirt roads full of red dust - and of course some tropical rain. To visit the Thousand Lingas, the phallic symbols of fertility in Kbal Spean you should trek an hour and a half in the jungle. The Citadel of Women, Banteay Srey on the contrary is a very easy access. Though it is small and the last temple we visited it could still surprise us with its distinctive carvings and structure.

To finish our trip we settled in a Sports Bar to watch how the Poles perform in F1 and the European Soccer Championship. At 3.30 in the morning we had a romantic walk to our guesthouse to have a blink of sleep before we depart to Bangkok at 7 am. With the hope to have a tight sleep on the bus we placed our hopes in the driver - not for long. After 1 hour of sitting on top of our backpacks in a totally crowded and hot bus the driver entered to a shouting competition with one of the passengers and started the engine only after making sure he is expelled from the trip. The road is less thatn 200 km to the border, but it took us 6 hours, just to learn that we are not going to make it through the border. Visa on arrival is not available contrary to the information we gathered previously, so the devil was laughing at us having another 6 hours in front of us back to Siem Reap. Besides the obvious pain we felt about this mess we were about to miss our next day flight from Bangkok to Myanmar. I will not enter into all the details of finding the way to fly to Bangkok, but for certain if one thing goes wrong there will be as many following it as it is possible. Only the departure tax we had to pay per person at the airport was double the price we paid for the bus to Bangkok, but the airport in Siem Reap is tip top - no doubt. Arriving to Bangkok, rushing through our To Do list gave us another 4 hours to sleep before we headed back to the airport to fly out to Yangon.