The Temples of Angkor
Arriving anywhere in the middle of the night, bleary-eyed and disoriented, is never a good time to be hassled by tuk tuk touts. At the Siem Reap station it was one of those moments. Before you know it, your bags have been offloaded and are bouncing their way off into the distance on someone’s shoulders, leaving you to scamper after them as best you can through the melee. At least we knew how much the fare should be… I started my usual “I’ll pay you this much…” lecture, but got a calm response. “Don’t worry my lovely brother,” said Kim the tuk tuk driver, “you can pay me whatever you like.” Suspicious. We found our hotel with ease and Kim then tried to persuade me to employ him as our driver around the Angkor temples. A swap of WhatsApp numbers later, I had to force him to accept the right fare for the journey. He was prepared to go without payment on the chance I’d agree to using him further.
That, it seems, is the level of competition here for your business. There are thousands of tuk tuks in Siem Reap, the gateway town to the Angkor temples, so drivers use any edge to convince you to use them, even risking losing legitimate payment. We ended up taking a chance on Kim after he quoted us $5 less than our hotel was charging for a day’s motoring around. Just $20 for a 14 hour day.
And what a day. Or rather what a few days. There are not enough superlatives to describe the temple complex at Angkor. It’s one of the most famous, and touristed, places on the planet, and deservedly so. Nowhere else can you find such a charismatic collection of ruins, some of which are still working monasteries, where exploration makes even the most serious observer marvel in child-like wonder. It’s one of very few places in the world where the throngs can’t distract or detract from your enjoyment. This was the one destination on the entire trip where we’d decided to repeat our experience of 20 years before and tour the temples again. We loved it the last time. I suspect this time we loved it even more. Hopefully the photos below do it at least some justice.
Kim, as it turned out, was a wise choice indeed. A quiet, serious and efficient guy who was happy to accommodate our slightly unusual routes through the temples over a couple of days. We ended up indeed being ‘lovely brothers’.
Day one saw us getting up at 3:30 am – an early start to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat, the most famous temple of all, and one where we remembered being joined by many, many tourists last time. On this occasion it was still busy, but nowhere near as crammed as we remembered. As the sun rose, we noticed that all those there looked distinctly western. We’d heard rumours that the vast Chinese, Korean and Japanese tour groups might not be visiting Cambodia at the moment due to the recent violent border skirmishes with Thailand, about 150 kilometers away. The rumours turned out to be true – the majority of our time here was largely tour group free, making the experience even more special.
Angkor is now a vast archeological park and playground, containing the largely intact and utterly enchanting remnants of the Khmer empire’s capital. Mainly built between the 9th and 15th centuries, their histories and construction are a little confused and arcane. Most, like us, are simply content to appreciate their history as an overview and focus on the endless marvel of the architecture and the stunning forest setting. We did the ‘short circuit’ on our first day and after sunrise went straight to Angkor Thom where the famous Bayon temple met us with its beaming faces and endless, enigmatic smiles.
Ta Prohm is probably the most famous temple after Angkor Wat, largely due to the kapok, banyan and strangler fig trees that both support the remains and slowly tear them apart. This is prime Indiana Jones / Tomb Raider territory and as a result is the busiest place in the complex. But off the main route, like so many other temples here, you can find yourself isolated from people and surrounded by the most bewitching scenes. Grey and black stone, lopsided lintels, images of apsaras covered in cobwebs, huge snake-like roots creeping out between groaning stone blocks. It’s quite incredible.
We finished our day back at Angkor Wat for the sunset after almost 15 hours worth of exploration. A quick shower, dinner, off to bed, then up again at 5:00am for another day’s excitement, this time on the ‘long circuit’. We couldn’t resist another visit to Ta Prohm in the better light of the early morning, but were even more thrilled when we came across a temple we must have missed last time, the lovely gem of Ta Som. Temples like these see a mere fraction of the visitors at the likes of Angkor Wat, so it’s not uncommon to have them to yourselves, or with only very few others around. Equally they are often the most atmospheric and reward you for clambering over fallen stones or ducking under low and precarious looking lintels to discover half-lit faces and decorative floral motifs steadily crumbling in their neglect.
Some things have changed since our last visit. All the roads are now metalled (20 years ago the long circuit was still dirt track), and in places the authorities have tried to recreate, to a certain extent, how the temples might once have looked. A good example is the island temple of Neak Pean. When we last visited we strolled 200 meters across a dirt ditch to get there. Now the entire area has been flooded to re-establish how it looked when it was first built, complete with low walkways across water strewn with blooming water-lillies.
We’d intended to rest on our final day at Angkor, having a flight in the afternoon, but couldn’t resist the temptation to go back to the temple of Banteay Srei and see the site of Beng Mealea, a temple deep in the forests that has only recently become accessible.
Banteay Srei is a lovely little temple situated a good distance away from the main temple complex and is famed for its delicious pink sandstone hues in the evening light. No wonderful light on this occasion, but the intricacy of this most feminine of temples was a delight.
Beng Mealea, however, was a revelation. Unlike some of the main temples at Angkor, this one has not been touched, other than to put in a small wooden walkway so you can get around inside. This really is the stuff of small boy exploration fantasy, particularly as there’s almost no-one else there. A massive complex, as big as Angkor Wat, it’s in a state of total ruin with huge decaying sandstone blocks left as they fell as the structures partly collapsed over time or via the insidious roots of the many trees that are slowly reclaiming their territory. Here though, is a very rare intact vaulted walkway, dank and cold despite the hot day and pitch black save for the small shafts of light streaming in from the tiny windows high above. Everywhere roots and branches weave their way through the structure, enhancing the beauty and destroying what’s left.
Our return to Cambodia, albeit brief, has been very full-on and busy, but wonderful for it and to be honest, it’s been a total joy to be back here. On to northern Thailand!
Angkor Wat
Angkor Thom East Gate
Bayon
Baphuon
Elephant & Leper King Terraces
Chau Say Tevoda
Thomamon
Ta Keo
Ta Prohm
Banteay Kdei
East Mebon
Ta Som
Neak Pean
Preah Khan
Banteay Srei
Beng Mealea
Foodnote: The River Cafe in Siem Reap is a new and modern venture by a Cambodian couple who specialise in fusion food. For my meal I chose a beef carpaccio patty with red ants. Assuming the latter was just a colloquial term for a fairly standard accompaniment, I was a little surprised when the dish was presented with a topping of several hundred dead insects, all stuck together in little clumps as if they’d died in each other’s arms. They turned out to be quite the thing though – crunchy and ever so slightly sweet and a particularly good accompaniment to the little circle of raw meat they spent their final moments on…..
Footnote: In our never-ending quest to try the new and novel, we enrolled in a pottery class in Siem Reap. We’d expected a load of others to join us, but it was us alone, with a deaf and dumb girl teaching us by example and helping us try and make our own creations. This one was most definitely not my forte. All my attempts ended in sheer disaster / total collapse / flying clay. Helen however, had a great deal more success and with only a little help managed to produce some most respectable cups, bowls and plates.
Simon (10th January 2026)
Wonderful pictures, the deatil on the architecture of the temples still amaze me. Glad it was just as special the 2nd time round, I loved exploring these.
One of the best places in the world in my opinion….