Tuesday 11 August 2015

Day 286: Too many temples

This morning we were downstairs for breakfast at 7am, so we would be ready for our 8am tuk-tuk out to the temples. Our driver turned out to be the same guy as yesterday – he's obviously retained by the hotel to do pick-ups and drop-offs and the like. He took us out to the ticket office, where we paid our $25 each (although it was free for the girls) and then we drove out into the sprawling Angkor temple complex. Soon enough we were pootling from temple to temple, climbing out of the tuk-tuk, clambering around a temple and then clambering back in and setting off for the next one. We had decided to try to cram everything into one day, so we didn't stop for lunch – just filling up on strawberry wafers, crackers and shrimp crackers. And lots of water – the tuk-tuk had an icebox under one of the seats, and we got through I don't know how many bottles of water. 











Many of the temples we visited were virtually deserted, but then, when we got to some of the 'iconic' ones, we encountered huge crowds. At one of these, we met a lovely American mother and daughter we'd met earlier on the boat up to Phnom Penh. At the next temple, we climbed several sets of very steep, very tall stairs, and by the time we got back down to the bottom, Kate and I were both getting cramps in our thighs. It was at around this time that the girls started to flag, so when we got to the next temple, I went in alone while the others took a break in the shade.









We then walked down to another of the iconic temples – the Bayon (the one with all of the enormous stone faces). Our driver had dropped us off back up the road and told us that he would meet us at the south side of the Bayon, but we came down the wrong side and when we looked around for our tuk-tuk, it was nowhere to be seen. I set off to look for it and ended up doing a complete circuit (in the 35C+ heat) without seeing our driver. We all set off for another circuit and eventually Zoe spotted him asleep in his tuk-tuk. Our day was nearly over by now – we only had Angkor Wat itself to see. On the way there, however, we had an extended stop to watch a couple of large troops of monkeys walking around beside the road. Angkor Wat was pretty crowded and we were feeling pretty exhausted and temple-fatigued by this point, but we managed to get around and see everything that needed to be seen.




















Overall, Kate and I noticed a lot of changes in the temples since we were last there. .During our last visit, there were much fewer visitors around and very few restrictions on where you could go and what you could do. That had clearly changed and the powers that be have obviously realised that the volume of visitors that the temple complex now receives is bringing with it a significant amount of wear and tear, so there are now wooden stairs and boardwalks in many of the ruins, and some areas have been cordoned off completely. There are also restrictions on the numbers of visitors to some areas now. It seems that the authorities are also more safety conscious – one of the temples we tried to visit was off-limits to under-12s. And they appear to have done some structural tests on the temples themselves – there are supporting beams in many doorways and quite a few of the taller structures were being together with large bands.

When we had finally made it back to the hotel, we went for a swim in its little pool (even more luxury!) and then went out for a pretty average dinner at a little place across the road. Most of the meal was okay, but we ordered a plate of chicken wings that was both slow to arrive and essentially inedible when it did.

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