Angkor WHAT

Last Saturday I went to visit Cambodia's main tourist attraction - the temples of Angkor Wat. Despite always being ambivalent about sunrises and a pretty awful cyclist to was persuaded to choose the Sunrise Bicycle Tour. Ten hour of cycling through villages and forest paths to see just some of the temples in what used to be a giant, ancient city.

Angkor Wat is just one of the temple complexes - the largest, and the one you'll see on the front of tourist brochures and in alongside the "I Heart Cambodia" T-shirts. And it's in front of here that all the tourists gather, huddled on rocks in the pitch dark, waiting for the sun to shed some light on the icon.

On the day we went, it was also the backdrop for a wedding shoot (Chinese I think, rather than Khmer).

Wedding stilettos/12th century Khmer sculpture

My favourite temple was the  at Angkor Thom - famous for the huge Buddha faces made out of puzzle blocks of stone. Climbing up and walking among the wise faces of the buddhas was a pretty special experience. I wouldn't go as far as to say I felt enlightened, but certainly very awed and very lucky.

Of course these temples were very swarming with tour groups but some others were completely deserted apart from us. 

Queen goofball 

And as for the cycling... well it was a challenge. The paths were very narrow and bumpy and parts were sandy. I have never cycled through sand and never plan to again. It seems to just stop the wheels dead unless you peddle incredibly fast, which when you're going quickly down and then uphill was too much for me to handle. I fell off my bike twice, which was embarrassing but luckily I was with a very nice Australian couple who were very accommodating to my dyspraxic ways.,,,

Me and a fellow tour participant Jess on one of my rare upright moments

Our tour guide, Sam, was amazing. His mother had sent him to be a monk at the age of 11 and he had lived as one until 21. Having learnt about the histories of the temples, he decided to be a tour guide. He was immensely knowledgeable and had a jokey, kind and open demeanor which is shared by a lot of the Khmer people I have met. He also persuaded me to pull an extremely goofy pose in front of the "Tomb Raider" temple...

Here's a plug in case you want to have this delightful, sandy experience of Angkor Wat.

http://grasshopperadventures.com/

.