Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is probably the most famous tourist attraction in all of Cambodia; it is even on the Cambodian flag (fact of the day: the only other country flag in the world that features a national monument is the current flag of Afghanistan). Angkor Wat is an ancient city of temples, but there is also a temple within the complex itself called Angkor Wat, just to confuse things. Over 50% of foreign tourists visiting Cambodia each year go to see Angkor Wat. And I'm not surprised, because it was beautiful.

Angkor Wat at sunrise. We got up at 4.30am for this view

We decided to break the temple viewing up over two days, because 1) there's a lot to see and 2) it was over 32°c and there isn't much shade there. You want to be out of the sun by midday if you can! We had been advised to go to some of the smaller temples on day 1 and save the 'big three' (the three most impressive temples) for the second day. The temples on day 1 were still really impressive, particularly considering they had been built in the first half of the 12th century and pretty much abandoned to the jungle by the 17th century. Restoration didn't begin until the start of the 20th century so some of the buildings were crumbled and falling down, and others had great big trees that had taken root and grown on top.

One of the temples on the first day was entirely surrounded by water, and we had to walk along a long, narrow gangplank over a lake to reach it. It was beautiful scenery and Kim and I spent more time just looking around us at the lake than we did looking at the temple itself. We were lucky because it was such a clear day, so the reflections in the water were amazing.

On the first day we saw five temples and then decided we both needed to find some air conditioning so headed back to Siem Reap, which is the closest city to Angkor Wat and where we were staying for a few days.

We had hired a tuk-tuk driver for the two days, a very nice Cambodian man called Lee, who drove us around the site and told us a bit about the history of the ruins. The next day he picked us up at the crack of dawn (4.30am) to take us to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. While we were by no means the only tourists there, we managed to nab a good spot to sit and watch without having loads of people blocking our view - as you know, I'm about the same height as most people's shoulders because puberty forgot to give me a growth spurt, so I struggle a bit in crowds!

After sunrise, we explored Angkor Wat the temple, and saw loads of monkeys! They were wild but very tame, completely uninterested in all the people around them taking photos actually. Apart from if you had food on you: one man had a plastic bag with some water and bananas in and a monkey darted forward, swiped open the bag with his claws and grabbed the bunch of bananas before you could blink. He then sat very smugly eating them while looking the bereft tourist in the eye.

Cheeky monkey, ignoring the sign

The next temple on our list was Bayon, which is made up of hundreds of carved faces of Buddha. This was pretty surreal, being stared down at in every direction. Unfortunately most of the faces are weather-worn or crumbled now but there is restoration taking place in all of the temples, it's just a slow, precise process.

Last but not least, we visited Ta Prohm which was my favourite to explore. This was used in the 2001 film 'Tomb Raider' and it could easily have been the set for an Indiana Jones film too. The building was collapsed in a lot of places and overgrown with plants and trees; it has been abandoned for over 400 years and renovations have only begun very recently. However this made it a fantastic setting to explore and we got quite lost while wondering around its maze-like interior.

There are a few issues I had with the way the site is run however; most of the money to restore Angkor Wat comes from foreign aid. Only an estimated 28% of ticket sales goes back into the temples. This is because Sokimex, a private company founded by a Vietnamese-Cambodian businessman, has rented Angkor Wat from Cambodia since 1990 and manages tourism there - for profit. Sokimex also has a petroleum division, manages hotels, and runs Sarika Air Services. Seems such a shame to me that an ancient wonder of the world like Angkor Wat is being run for profit and that although millions of people pay to visit the site each year (Cambodians can visit for free), they're investing very little back into the area.