Ta Prohm and the end of an adventure

It’s taken me nearly 3 months, but this is the last blog post from my incredible trip to South East Asia back in November. I’d like to finish by sharing some more temple photographs. Ta Prohm was my favourite temple, and although it is one of the most popular with tourist groups, it was easy to lose the crowds and discover our own experience of this incredible place. When I studied A-level art one of the themes I explored was nature taking over man-made structures so this would have been the perfect subject matter! They are talking of restoring some of the temples but I hope they don’t do too thorough a job, as for me the beauty of this place is made by the ruins and trees intertwining.

Queuing for that iconic holiday snap!

There’s something quite sinister about this tree

Ok, so maybe some restoration would be required … 

A sense of the scale of the temple, and the number of tourists

It’s felt like quite a marathon to write all these posts and choose from my thousands of photos. But I’m glad that I did it as it’s given me time to reflect on this trip. I’m not what you would call a “traveller”, I hate flying and I’m a bit of a scaredy-cat generally so this trip was a big deal for me. Although it’s a cliche, this really felt like a once in a lifetime experience and I savoured every moment that we had. Although I’d rather forget the cockroach incident in our hotel …

 

 

The Temples of Angkor Wat

Our main reason for visiting Cambodia was to visit the Angkor Wat temple complex. Although I’d read a bit about the temples before visiting, I hadn’t quite imagined just how large the site was and that you’d need a tuk-tuk to drive you between temples. I thought you could just walk! We hired a guide for our first day, and although he had some interesting facts to share his main role seemed to be to encourage as to strike cheesy poses in various tourist hot spots … so we opted for just the tuk-tuk driver and exploring the sites on our own for the other two days. You could spend weeks exploring every nook and cranny of these stunning sites, however in the intense heat three days felt like a good amount, with plenty of time spent back at the hotel in the pool to cool down.

I took hundreds of photographs of the temples and have struggled to decide how to share these with you. We visited so many amazing sites, some heaving with tourists and others that seemed almost deserted. My favourite site was Ta Prohm Temple so I plan to do a separate post to share some of the highlights from that beautiful temple. I’ve shared my highlights from the rest of the temples below.

The famous and iconic site of Angkor Wat – so iconic that it appears on the Cambodian flag 

I loved the detail, every wall of Angkor Wat seemed to be covered in intricate carvings telling different stories. 

They seemed very cute but signs telling you to ‘beware of the monkeys’ hinted at their true colours!

One of the many stunning bridges crossing the lakes and rivers 

Bayon Temple was very intriguing, with many faces carved into the towers. It was one of my favourites on that first hot day of exploring, and I found it quite eerie at times.

Bayon Temple

Queues of tuk-tuks! You won’t forget that this is a tourist trap…

We spotted these unusual towers from our tuk-tuk and asked to stop to have a look. Such a mysterious place!

Many of the temples are in this state, but with some work going on to restore I hope they don’t lose the magic of the ruins!

The jungle takes back control!

I loved the way these trees were crawling over the ruins 

To reach one of the smaller temples we had to cross this swamp on a very narrow wooden bridge!

Incense drifting through the air reminds you that many still use these temples as places of worship

I loved the beauty of these carvings

Our tuk-tuk driver took us to a temple where we could watch the sunset.

We spotted the moon rising on the other side of the temple.

Don’t kid yourself that you’re the only one enjoying this magical sunset!

I opted not to climb these stairs, my boyfriend did and regretted it when he was halfway back down!

I could have posted hundreds of pages of photos from these incredible temples. I found them fascinating places to visit and enjoyed exploring the ruins and imagining the vast empire it once was. I’ll never forget the hot and exhausting days we spend exploring these temples with the soundtrack of cicadas.