It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what we’d been hoping for.
Though it could have been worse. We’d been monitoring the weather, hoping for a promising day, but the forecasts were relentlessly consistent: sunny/cloudy, every day. No knowing which you’d get. But this being our last day here, we had to give it our best shot, so we set the alarms for 4am. Let me repeat that: 4am. And took the tuk tuk to the temple for the last time.
As advertised, the insanely early start meant we got there ahead of the crowds, and were able to grab a prime position – or at least, as prime a position as was available, given that the ‘ideal’ lake of the two in front of the temple was fenced off and drained – and waited. And waited. And there was quite a lot of waiting to do: we’d arrived for the opening time of five, and the sun wasn’t due to make an appearance till 6.15. So, gradually the crowds grew around us, and gradually the skies lightened, and eventually the sun was up and, well, that was that. It was nice, but not so’s you’d write home about it. Though you might put it on your blog. Ellie had got some truly spectacular shots when she’d been here, and I thought about asking her to send me one, but Virle said that would be cheating.
Oh well. Still many temples to go – and roots to find. And the next temple on the agenda sounded promising. Billed as Angelina Jolie’s temple, though old timers like me will always think of it as Indiana Jones’s, Ta Prohm is the one everyone’s seen, with roots. And it didn’t disappoint.
Better yet, thanks to arriving so early, as advised by a blog, we managed to see Ta Prohm largely without tourist-frenzy. There were others around of course, but it was never intolerable, and I was finally able to get the kinds of photos I’d been hoping for throughout our time here. As we walked back down yet another of the endless paths that seem to join all these temples to the road, floods of tour-tourists headed our way. As Virle said, they’d have followed up their Angkor Wat sunrise with an AngKor Wat Tour, and were now here to continue their Angkor Wat in One Day experience. One bullet we’d managed to dodge.
For the next few hours we continued following the Day 3 itinerary, as laid out on the blog we’d read, and found it good. Each temple had something to offer; each was genuinely special in its own way. Some were really tumbledown, with scaffolding and metal bands sort of holding things together, and up, and piles of masonry, miscellaneous carvings and lintels willy nilly, inside and out; others, often thanks to restoration, in pretty good nick. Some were so large you rather ended up going round in circles (“Have we been here before?”); others were by comparison distinctly bijou. But as I said to Virle as we began to flag, I haven’t seen one that hasn’t given me something.
Having said which, all good things must come to an end, and ours concluded with one temple still on our list, when we agreed that we were pretty much templed-out, and it was time to head back before we collapsed from the ever-increasing heat, the humidity, and perhaps above all, with Virle suffering from a niggling cough, the omnipresent dust.
Back to the hotel and we’ve spent the afternoon mostly recovering from these three excellent but unquestionably gruelling days, and now we’re planning a very modest expedition to find something to eat before we get our first no-alarm-required sleep in what feels like an age.
