Peter, an American and I shared a TukTuk for the day. It was 15 USD and our driver Sakhorn (whom I befriended on Facebook now as well :-)) would take as to all the temples in the main Angkor area.
You could either get a one-day ticket for 20 USD, a three-day ticket for 40 USD or a 7day ticket for which I didn't even want to know the price.
Looking at the map and realizing the vastness of this place I decided to take the three-day ticket. Peter was already on his 3rd day and had seen Angkor Wat (the largest and most famous temple), so we only stopped off there for a quick look before going on to Bayon which is located in Angkor Thom.
It was unbelievable to walk around the site. You are barely restricted in access to different areas, you can just roam around and walk into little rooms and check out all the intricate carvings and the amazing architecture.
I really liked this temple (It was my first to see properly) because of the rectangular foundation which morphed into a round top pagoda with many little holy chambers. It also had huge stone faces carved into most of the towers.
Just thinking about them having been there for such a long time is really incredible.
Within the walled perimeters of Angkor Thom we also visited Baphuon and Phimeanakas, two further temples where we were nearly alone. After a look at the Terrace of the Elephant and the Leper King we had lunch at the favourite place (I think they are all exact copies of each other) of our driver. He was even helping out in the kitchen. The food was good but we did pay tourist prices.
After this we went to visit Ka Teo which is a temple built from a different kind of rock than all the other temples around here. This one was not too exciting as loads of excavation equipment was standing around here.
Next stop was To Prohm, which had a special atmosphere to it as the archaeologists decided to leave it (in most of the places) as they found it, and not to clear it from trees ad jungle growth.
It really felt like being Indiana Jones, climbing through the 800 year old ruins and finding the "secret" passageways and exploring the last corner of this temple. Many of the walls were overgrown cotton silk and strangler fig trees. Two of them must have been very famous trees as there were many Chinese tour groups posing in front of them to take pictures.
In fact this temple (To Phrom) was used to shoot some of the scenes in Tomb Raider.
Many times today I though, how must it have been arriving at one of these temples 800 years ago, after trekking through the jungle for months and then suddenly standing in front of one of these marvellous feats of human engineering.
I was really surprised how much this Angkor archaeological park fascinated me.
Our last site of the day was Pre Rup which is one of the oldest (961 AD) temples of the area. We went there with the plan to watch the sunset over the jungle but today was pretty cloudy so the sunset was not looking to be great and since I still had two more days we decided to go back to the Hostel to dip into the pool.
Yes, our Hostel has a Pool... right next to the Bar. I can really recommend Siem Reap Hostel for it's amenities and as it is good place to meet fellow backpackers to explore the area.
After a very short but very refreshing dip into the pool I had some dinner and chatted with the people at the hostel where I found out from an Irish lad, that Ireland was playing Scotland tonight (in Soccer/Football) and it was an important game as either of them could get a major step closer to qualify for the Eurocup (interesting fact: There is a qualifying round to go to the Euros ;-)).
Unfortunately the game was on at 3:30 in the morning and it was only 11. So, we decided to spend the remaining 4 1/2 hours till kick off with drinking beers for half a dollar each.
We went from bar to bar, but with time passing and each change of the location the bars go worse and worse and ended up to be just fuc*ed up clubs with undefinable music blaring from the speakers and packed with (even more) drunk (than me), dancing idiots, that I decided to head back around 2:30.
Good decision as Ireland lost the game in the end.
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