{"id":3027,"date":"2026-03-14T08:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T08:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/cr\/?p=3027"},"modified":"2026-03-15T01:09:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T01:09:55","slug":"fri-13-mar-siem-reap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/?p=3027","title":{"rendered":"Fri 13 Mar – Siem Reap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today I got to see the heart of Cambodia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first time I ever heard of Cambodia was Angkor Wat, thanks to the aforementioned Placebo live concert. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tourist attractions are often letdowns, overphotographed and overcrowded. I did not feel that way about Angkor Wat. It was incredible in scale and breath-taking in design. It truly felt like a monument. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today’s blog post will be heavier on the photos rather than words. I have never been that interested in ancient history or religion so my focus waned during the explanations. I was just soaking up the awesome beauty of the complexes and their age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We’re blessed with three lady tuk-tuk drivers today, part of an Intrepid initiative for the “power of the lady”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Taken from outside Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat was a 12th century city. It had an inner protected area for kings and royalty. The rest of the population lived within the outer walls (pictured), which themselves are surrounded by a huge moat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Taken from within Angkor Wat, looking at the inner walls, protecting supreme leaders from their subjects.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Taken from the top of the inner sanctuary, looking back into Angkor Wat grounds (where the general public would have lived). In the distance you can see the end of the outer fortifications. If taken from a higher distance above ground you’d be able to see a large moat trace the perimeter around that. The jungle around Angkor Wat is stunning and unbroken when viewed from this small elevation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Restorations. The temple has had many lives, including being shot at in the 1970s to hunt out the Khmer Rouge that were using it for refuge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Resting. Angkor Wat really was worth coming to Cambodia to see. The Khmer people used to control far more of South East Asia than they do now and Angkor Wat is a tribute to a history that stretches far beyond the current country borders.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Second temple sight, after Angkor Wat. There are many more relic sites in Siem Reap, not just Angkor Wat. Siem Reap used to be the capital of Cambodia way back when. ‘Siem’ refers to that nation that is now Thailand and ‘Reap’ means what it sounds like, so ‘Siem Reap’ literally means ‘the eviction of Thailand’. These two countries have been in conflict so long that their kingdoms both had completely different names when it began.
This is called Smiling Budda temple. I’m a bit tired here and it’s getting hotter in the day. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Explore.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Our little tour group has a bit of a revolt and demand lunch after the second temple (the schedule has us going straight to a third). Our tour leader submits to the power of the lady and takes us for a ‘local’ lunch nearby. Lady drivers join us for lunch too. They can’t speak a word of English but they aren’t shy at the skewer-based lunch, picking bones of little BBQ’d fish cleaner than street cats. Pictured are frog skewers stuffed with pork mince. They’re very flavourful. There’s a bit of confusion over how to split the group bill so I cover everyone. This grants me more goodwill than expected. The lady drivers give me a very happy ‘or-kun’ (thank you) and bows. The Canadian lady interested in temples almost falls over herself happiness when I suggest that she donate her costs to a temple when she tries to insist on giving me cash later.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Third temple, known affectionately by Cambodians as Lara Croft Temple after a section of Tomb Raider was shot here. Our tour leader served Angelina Jolie dinner in her hotel room while she was shooting the movie and says she was very beautiful. A tuk-tuk driver told us, eyes sparkling with reverence, that he drove her once. The Cambodian people love Angelina Jolie.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The temple is amazing and well justified to be a movie set. There are trees everywhere growing in and out of it. Some of the trees have destroyed the buildings, some of the tree roots are the only thing holding others together. The gold patina is completely natural and looks almost metallic in the sunshine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Back in town, I make a bad decision and get a brownie smoothie before dinner. It’s terrible, of course. I only finish half and am totally full. The book selection at this cafe was equally as atrocious – on one shelf a Wiccan handbook sat next to a Prince Harry autobiography – but it’s nice that they tried.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I know I shouldn’t just have a brownie smoothie for dinner so I power through and order Big Bone Noodle Soup (translated). I can only finish half and I am near bursting.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angkor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thailand-laos-cambodia-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3027"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3060,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3027\/revisions\/3060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}