Forgive the gag, but I was in poor shape when we set off in the tuk tuk this morning. Aftermath of a night spraying rusty water in the great white telephone. I said to Virle, I’m used to thinking of myself as pretty robust when it comes to coping with street food, but recent experiences have left me wondering whether I’m actually quite as tough as I like to think.
One rather embarrassing episode as we set off from our hotel. We were approached by a man we thought was the tuk tuk driver who’d brought us from bus to hotel yesterday, with whom we’d arranged three solid days as our chauffeur. As we smiled and greeted him, we suddenly realised we were neing regarded reproachfully by another tuk tuk driver, protesting that we’d arranged for him to be our driver. Which of course proved to be the case, leaving us backpedalling with tuk tuk driver No 1, who looked understandably crestfallen. We get the impression since our arrival that there’s a lot more tuk tuk drivers than tuk tuk business.
Anyway, with that sorted, we set off for Angkor Wat. We’d asked Som – our actualy driver – if he could take us somewhere we could get something for lunch, and he did, to a roadside restaurant which did us what later proved to be a fine veggie fried rice: two bucks, and plenty for both of us. Then it was off to the permits place. We’d tried to sort the permits the evening before, but without success. I’d gone down to ask the nice man on the front desk why the website kept saying ‘no face detected’ – that’s a face, isn’t it? He looked apologetic and a tad embarrassed, saying in effect, it’s a government site, so it doesn’t work. As I moaned to Virle, their number one tourist asset by a country mile – you’d think they’d make the supporting infrastructure work. But apparently that just isn’t how it goes over here: the government’s crap; everyone just accepts it and gets on with their lives.
At Angkor Wat, Som dropped us off at the entrance, telling us to whatsapp him when we returned, and we set off up the long, long drive toward the temple. And I mean long – the walk must have taken the better part of twenty minutes. In the broiling sun, and in my febrile condition, I was exhausted before we even got there. But even before reaching the main temple, the sheer scale of the place couldn’t but impress you. We knew it was surrounded by a moat, but hadn’t realised it was something like 100m across – the causeway lined on both sides by giant carvings, which thanks to our museum visit yesterday, we recognised as gods on one side, demons on t’other.
Then into the main complex, which was stunning from the off: absolutely enormous, and pretty much every available surface etched and/or featuring wonderfully detailed bas relief decoration.
One massive bonus: we’d set off late, on the advice of a blog which said most people go for the legendary sunrise, and loads of them just leave mid-morning, and it proved to be spot on. So though the site was quite busy, it was so big that it really didn’t feel that way. Certainly compared to the likes of Bangkok’s Grand Palace it was far less of an ordeal, and we got around and managed to see everything without tourist-overload.
Which was all the more welcome, because it was actually quite gruelling, with distances to cover, incredibly steep staircases to climb, and all overlaid with the heat, the heat, the heat. Which, once again, was absolutely stupefying.
From Angkor Wat, Som took us to the second temple on today’s itinerary – Angkor Thom – where we had our rice lunch, Virle persuading me to eat, though it was the last thing I felt like doing, and sure enough it improved matters almost straight away. Then to the temple itself, whose definitive feature is its massive faces, metres high, carved into the masonry.
They really are quite stunning. And as in Angkor Wat temple, surfaces were liberally decorated with beautifully-wrought etchings and bas relief work.
And that was about that for our first day in Angkor Wat. Even though I’d rallied from my previous wrung-out state, the sheer relentless intensity of the heat, added to the gruelling physical effort, meant that we decided enough was enough, and headed for our agreed rendezvous point, where we found Som chilling in a hammock suspended in the tuk tuk, waiting to take us back to the world of air conditioning and swimming pools on the roof. All we have to do now is be up in the am in time for tomorrow’s pickup, at 6.30 😳.