Siem Reap: Tourist Heaven and Hell

After being in Laos, arriving in Siem Reap was like landing in a different world. In many ways the city is like landing back in Europe - bright lights, hipster coffee shops and buckets of avocado on toast make it feel like a home away from home. A very cheap but pretty fancy hotel was waiting for us and the place was stuffed with tuk tuks offering cheap fares to where ever. When you’re travelling, sometimes the ease of getting around in a place designed almost exclusively for tourists is actually really nice, as you can switch off for a while and indulge in some home comforts. After recovering from the cramped ride across the Laos/Cambodia border, we were looking forward to exploring arguably one of the most famous places in the world – Angkor Wat. Having failed to repeat our biking success from Sokohthai at the Plain of Jars, we thought we’d given it one more shot in Siem Reap to explore the Angkor complex and surrounding ruins on pedal power alone. Long story short, it did not go well.

The Angkor complex was originally constructed as a Hindu Temple by the Khmer Empire, eventually becoming a Buddhist temple in the 12th century. It is incredibly well preserved and the scale is hard to comprehend until you stand in the grounds. It is situated about 5km outside of Siem Reap (7km from where we were staying), but confusingly, the entry ticket centre is actually about a 6km round trip detour off the main road to reach the temples (this is fine if you have a taxi or tuk tuk, but on a bike in the searing heat, the extra distance is a killer). We had also not fully appreciated the distances between the different ruins after the main Angkor site, which ended up being about 4-6km a pop. As the sweat dripped into our eyes and soaked our t-shirts, we watched relaxed looking tourists glide past us in their own private hire tuk tuk and realised we had made a bit of blunder. After most of a day of cycling, we decided to flag a tuk tuk to load our bikes on and driver take us back to the city.

The difficulties of our mistake in transportation aside, we felt like we experienced Angkor slightly differently from the way many reviews make it out. The temple is held up as beautiful, spiritual place that has a lasting impact on all who go there. For us, whilst there was no denying how spectacular the area is, the buses and buses of gigantic tour groups, the screaming children and tourists inconsiderately climbing all over the delicate world heritage ruins was a little demystifying (and at times infuriating – you do sometimes feel like shouting when people blatantly ignore signs designed to protect the site, and don't even get me started on the abused elephants being paraded around and ridden). That is not to say that you should avoid Angkor altogether, it was definitely worth visiting and we are glad we went, but if you’re expecting to get some pictures akin to the promo shots in guidebooks, you will be disappointed. Luckily we arrived pretty early in the morning before most of the tour groups, meaning the theme park style roped off queues telling you how many minutes of waiting time you had left were not actually in use yet, but we can only imagine what it must be like at peak times! We found (not for the first time) that straying away from the main site was a little more peaceful and actually gives you space and time to enjoy exploring and wandering – so the main tips would be to arrive early by tuk tuk (which you can hire for a whole for $15-20), explore the Angkor complex before the crowds descend, then spend the majority of the day out in the outlying temples where fewer people go.