The morning found us
all too early as we sluggishly prepared for a day of photos. Instead of acting
as tourists should we slipped on our sandles, made sure our maxi dresses were
of appropriate attire for a temple and fixed our hair. About 4 minutes after leaving
the hotel we laughed to ourselves about our lack of organization. No food, no
jersey to cover our skin from the 4am chill, nothing to soothe our itching skin
as the mosquito’s latched on for breakfast. The longer then expected tuktuk
ride out to the beginning of the 20k stretch of ancient ruins did a fine job of
erasing any pre-photo grooming and the massive moths pelted us as if in
competition with the mosses.
After paying far too
much for tickets we arrived at stop number one-sunrise over a sunken lake of
which the sun was supposed to reflect into. Sadly the sun was a no show and
instead we stood with a good hundred tourists in a paddock as the sky became
light and the rain set in. It was fair to say as our tangled hair hung over our
faces, our tummies grumbled and our sandles slipped in the puddles we were
feeling a little ripped off. Luckily after a shottty breakfast I would prefer
to erase from my mind, and some puppies to lighten the mood we were off to
explore some more ruins by foot and see who could come up with the stupidest
pose. Many were attempted, failed and nailed!
I would like to say
that we really got into the history and culture of it all but after temple stop
number 5 we decided it was only right and proper not to stop at another look
alike until we reached the famous tomb raider set- a movie which none of us had
seen nor cared for. We finally arrived and this had to be a breaking point for
me. Theres something about movies making a beautiful place over commercialized in
the ugliest of ways that really grinds my gears and this was that exactly!
Im no pro but I was
under the impression that Angkor Wat made it into the world wonders book
because of the intricate details and magnitude of these palace like rock
formations stood the test of time, even after ruin from the past Khmer Rouge
war. But here we found a reconstructed, scaffolding plastered maze with roped
off stages for photo ops! Just to top it off the heat set in just as we got
completely lost in this chaos causing us to walk around in circles for a good
30minutes. 30 minutes might not sound like much, but this place isn’t actually
that big, so we were passing the same thing every few minutes and getting the
odd hand gesture that “the exit is that direction” from places we had just come
from. Finally we made it out and back to our tuktuk driver for the ride home.
And fancy that we even made it back before the hotel breakfast had ended- we
classed this as winning!
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