We promised our Tuk Tuk guy Ali, the
night before that we wanted to go to Angkor Wat as early at 5am. He came at 5am
and knocked on our hotel room door but we were still sleeping like pigs. I guess the
day trip from Bangkok really got us. Poor Ali, I told him to come at 8am. He
was disappointed and really nice to us. I found him really kind when dealing
with customers the night before compare to other Tuk Tuk guys, whom you can see,
money in their eyes. I guess that's what I learned from my pass travelling’s in Asia
or even in my home country. Always negotiate the price as low as ¼ from the
price that they gave us and going to ½ of the price was the limit or at least
how much it should cost. With Ali, we didn’t negotiate much; somehow we felt
the honesty in him. It was USD 20 for the day trip to see the Angkor Wat area
and another USD 20 to enter the area itself.
I’m not really into temples but for
Angkor Wat it's an exception because it's said to be one the wonders of the
world. It’s the biggest temple in the world. The Cambodians are proud of it and
they have it on their national flag. I don’t really know the detailed history
of Angkor Wat but what I knew it was built by a Khmer king in the 12th
century and was a Hinduism temple at first, and somehow in the 13th century
they converted it into a Buddhism temple and more temples around it were built
like the city of temples, Angkor Thom.
And some how the temples were neglected in the 16th century
but Angkor Wat was not totally being abandoned. Correct me if I’m wrong but do
check Wikipedia for more details or hire a tour guide which you may need to do
the Angkor visit and of course more money. Syafiq & I didn’t do that
because we were interested more on the architecture. The Angkor temples were so
huge and it would take at least three good days to visit them all. We only did
it for about 6-7 hours and it was freaking hot. It was just so hot. Maybe it
was the season. And we took the best ones; Angkor Wat the legendary – as Syafiq
said he finally got to visit a historical place where he learned from high
school text book. It was full of tourist and I assure that you will want to climb
until the highest pillars. I was excited to go for Ta Prohm because it was the
place where movies were being shot, like the Lara Croft Tree and Indiana Jones
temple of Dooms. Ta Prohm was amazing because how nature took over the temple
somehow. There were trees – huge massive trees growing inside out and on top of
the walls. And lastly the Angkor Thom – it is the city of temples. You won’t
have time to go everywhere in the city of temples area but the best part was
the Bayonn temple. It was really nicely structured and you just couldn't imagine how they
managed to built that kind of architecture back in those days. I love how the
colour of walls represent the age and how time had effected the buildings and
making them into mesmerizing colours
We were done by 3pm. I almost gave up
walking around the temples because it was sweating hot but somehow Bayonn made
me stay to explore. We head back to our hotel area, which was nearby a mosque,
and from there you can find halal food. Cambodia was also known for the Cham people,
which were an ethnic, migrated from Borneo sometime ago. Cham people are mostly
Muslims and somehow related to the Kelantanese in Malaysia. Most of the Cham
people live in Kampong Champa, Cambodia and that I really hope to go one day but
not on this trip. It is a majority Muslim place. So, in a way they kinda spread
out throughout Cambodia & Vietnam and in need of Halal food.
We didn’t have the time explore much of
Siem Reap except at nighttime. Somehow the place is quite dirty and it reminds
me of Bayuwangi, Indonesia. And from that I can tell you that they are really
poor and the stuff here are really cheap. So sometimes for me as a
cheapskate, I would think twice because in a way I pity them, even when they
were times it felt like they were scamming us with price.
It was goodbye for Syafiq and me. He
was leaving for Malaysia the next morning as I was heading for Pnom Penh to
meet up with an experienced Malaysian traveller that mid night. I took a sleeper bus, which cost me USD12 for
a 7-hour trip to Pnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia!
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