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Mar
2004-09-14 16:27:39

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a ticket for three days, including today, for $40 each. Luckily we have heard already that a picture is needed to get the ticket. Lunch for the rest of the world and a quick snack for us. We hurry to Angkor Wat, the main temple where everyone wants to go. By now it is hardly crowded; we are simply able to shoot pictures without other tourists on it. We wonder around, alone in the temple. In the later afternoon we visit The Bayon, the other main temple visited mostly. Again not so many tourists, good news for those who aren’t hungry at exactly lunchtime. When we cycle home we are again the only ones going home. The rest of the world seems to be in a great hurry. We take a look at the temple map. “I’ve been reading about this, they’re all going for the sunset on top of the hill”, Raymond says. We all laugh because apparently no one cared to look up: there will not be a nice sunset today, there has been a thick layer of clouds covering the sun for the past two hours. Many, many Tuk-tuks and motorcycles keep on moving towards the sunset hill, imagine hundreds of people on a hill watching clouds.

Tomorrow we have a full temple day and the day after we will use half the day for templing around and the other half a day for cycling towards the Thai border. That will only be about 50 kilometer, back to the One Room Fits All experience. We visit the perfect selection of temple styles. Not one temple is the same if you just pick them carefully. Our third day is a visit to one of the temples a bit further away (30 kilometers) and we take a Tuk-tuk. It is the most impressive temple we visited, especially the stone carvings.

Siem Reap to the Thai border

Alike the surrounding roads to airports and cities, the road around the Siem Reap is smoothly tarred, but no more than 35 kilometer. Here the tar stops abruptly and we can’t do our average 22 kilometer/hour anymore. What is left is a ...