After a long and fairly uncomfortable minibus ride (we were stuffed in like a clown car) to the Cambodian boarder, we crossed on foot and took a taxi the remaining 3 hours (poor quality roads rather than a particularly great distance) to Siem Reap. There we met our friend John who’s lived in Jakarta for the past 10 years and we hadn’t seen since we were all in Amsterdam (over 12 years ago).
We really enjoyed Siem Reap and had some great dinners and fun nights out in and around the aptly named “Pub Street”. But the highlight was of course our 2 days exploring the many temples in the area by tuk-tuk. For those of you that aren’t familiar, Angkor was the seat of the Khmer empire with the distinction of having been the largest pre-industrial city in the world (estimated to have covered an area of over 1.000 square kilometers). We won’t bore you with any more of the details since there is a great site called Wikipedia (you’ve probably heard of it) that does a way better job than we could anyway. We visited approximately 15 temple ruins over the 2 days that varied widely in scale, state of reconstruction/disrepair, and style. It was also interesting to see examples of how the jungle had overtaken and significantly damaged some of these amazing structures (explains how many had been lost for so many years). But it is probably best to let the pictures speak for themselves.
