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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