Angkor Day One: 25 Weary km by Bicycle

The three days at the temples at Angkor was always going to feed a trio of bloated photo heavy posts on this blog. The narrative of the days could easily get lost between the avalanche of pictures; that's something I'm trying to avoid. Why?

Professionalism, maybe...

That and the altered status of Sherweezy leaves me with some time.

After waking up we got a tuk-tuk to a bike rental place, knowing that the Angkor site was within bicycling distance. Corrie was feeling a bit under the weather, but we decided to brave the bikes and the road and head out.

There are many temples in the area, the biggest being Angkor Wat, one of the wonders of the world and the largest religious structure ever built by humans. To get access to the temple zone, you need to buy a ticket, the most popular being the three-day $40 ticket. They take a picture of you as you're buying the ticket, and your photo is then put on the ticket itself--no shady sneaking going on 'round here.

We decided to ride the bikes along the perimeter of the place, seeing most everything besides Angkor Wat and the Bayon, which we were saving for day two. Day three we were going to head to Angkor Wat for sunrise, and then we were heading out of the country, flying to Lao.

The three big sites at Angkor are the aforementioned Wat; Ta Prom; and the Bayon. There are many other cool sites, like the walls for Angkor Thom and the Terrace of Elephants, and the first day, after all the riding, we saved the Bauphon, another humongous structure, for the second day.

The first place we stopped I lost our bike key, and eventually paid a vendor five US dollars to find it and return it. That was stressful, and the lady made a day's worth of cash right then. But we moved on. That structure was older and not as photogenic as other sites. We did enter through one of Angkor Thom's gates:

And once inside we went to one of the walkable structures. I can't remember the name of this one, but it was cool and had less tourists than other spots.

Inside that opening get's you into the central courtyard where the beehive Hindu-dome style is seen in a smaller, more intimate form:

That same shape is replicated in almost all buildings and certainly all Wats from this era.

And inside you get some neat looks at how nature reclaims ruins:

From there we rode around to Ta Prom, which is, in our opinion, the awesome-ist granddaddy of all ruins we've seen in our travels. This is the one where you get channel your inner Indiana Jones. This is the temple being swallowed up by the jungle.

This is the one you can't really prepare for:

It's more fantastic than you're ready for, and especially when they let you climb all over everything.

Thank you Cambodia! Thank you for letting me climb all over everything!

When the chance happens and you get a quiet spot, you can sit back and reflect. The birds calling off in the distance like tiny ancient dinosaurs, the bugs palpable, the humidity noticeable but not yet oppressive, you start to feel like you're the first people in a thousand years to visit:

And you can climb!

Sometimes it looks like the trees are walking through and crushing everything at their own speed, a speed we only see in snapshot. We buzz around them in a misty blur as they deliberately reclaim this land:

We left for the Bauphon and then back to Siem Reap and our hotel, but part of the trip was going to cruise by the Terrace of Elephants, so we decided to take a look at that as well.

As we rode out towards that terrace, we passed a series of orange structures, lined up like serious lookouts. Here are a few in the golden light of dusk:

The next picture is from the terrace of elephants. By then we were totally wiped out. The bike riding betrayed the fact that none pf this stuff was very close together. I mean, generally of course, we were able to ride bikes from spot to spot, but the road we peddled on was heavy with bus, car, tuk-tuk and motor-bike traffic. Nearing the end of the day, and having skipped the most prominent site (the Wat), we were able to follow the distance markers spray-painted on the ground telling us we had gone nineteen kilometers. We knew we still had possibly seven to go to get back to our hotel, so we made this terrace "stroll" the end of the day of deliberate sightseeing:

Until:

MONKEYS!

They were cute, strong and ruthless. A little girl selling fruits came over offered to sell some of us tourists something with which we could entice the monkeys. The monkeys, on the other hand, had other ideas, and robbed the little girl. I picked up some of the dropped fruit and, in a picture captured by Corrie's camera, had a wonderful moment of "monkey-whispering".

I also tried to figure out what the monkey call is. I ended up with "MONKE-MONKE-MONKE-MON-KEEEE!"

It sounded as stupid in person as it looks typed, but, like answering these tonal languages with Spanish, it was a gut reaction.

Angkor, Cambodia, first time I saw monkeys living in the wild. Kinda like the "wild" seagulls of San Francisco, but still, WILD PRIMATES!

We made it back to the hotel eventually, showered, and passed out.