Cambodia📍Angkor Wat’s Playful and Lovely Side

Cambodia is famous because of their unique temples and elephants. Temple and elephants are two of the best I wanted to see in person in Cambodia and their famous Angkor Wat was first on my list. Angkor Wat in Cambodia is the largest religious monument in the world which could be seen in their national flag. The name Angkor Wat means "City of Temples", the name that made me so curious about the place and so eager to visit. I was still in my college year when I heard about Angkor Wat and when I read articles about this place, I promised to myself I will visit the place once I earned enough money to travel the country.

Last September, at last my dream in visiting the temple did came true. I visited Cambodia with an enthusiastic heart with my lovely friends and colleague in college. A lot of fun things did happened in our group travel. It was in both adventures and misadventures that made me and my friends say yay and nay.

After exploring the beautiful city of Ho Chi Mihn in Vietnam, we headed to Cambodia for our second country as part of our planned tri-country adventure. We were quite exhausted because of the long trip from Vietnam but it never stopped us to explore the unique kingdom of Cambodia anyway.

We arrived early as dawn time in Cambodia. We headed directly to our hostel at Pub Street to leave our bags and then went directly to the famous Angkor Wat to catch the sunrise. Since we are nine (9) in the group, we hired a private van to tour us around the city of Siem Reap.

Angkor Wat is located just a few kilometers North of Siem Reap town. You can also get to Angkor Wat from Siem Reap by taxi, tuk tuk or rented bicycle.

We were all glad we’ve met a very nice van owner, which was also recommended by one of my friends in the tour. His name is Tohor. I love to recommend him to you guys if you want to visit the city of Siem Reap. He is good in English. He’s a teacher by the way that want to be a tour guide, that’s why he said if we are able to revisit the country again feel free to contact him through his facebook account. He is now currently taking his license to be a professional tour guide in Cambodia. You can contact him and reach him through his facebook account, just click here!

We went first to Siem Reap Tourist Office and got our Angkor Pass for thirty seven dollars (37$). 

Once you will misplace the Angkor pass while exploring Angkor Wat, you are advice to buy another one if you are caught by the security that you’ve lost it, so keep it safe because aside from its expensive it serves as your I.D while in the temple.  Also, once you’ve bought it on the first day and you want to revisit on the second day, you can never use it again, instead you should buy another one.

It is impressive that there were really a lot of tourist came from other part of the globe even as early in the morning to catch the beautiful sunrise in the temple. In Cambodia particularly in Siem Reap, tourist is the main source of income. That is why every corner in the place you could find tourist roaming around, exploring the place and wandering.

I found Angkor Wat as a mystic one. Maybe others think that the temple is just a collation of stones in different sizes, but for me I appreciate how unique it is. I also believe its simplicity has great history behind that is why many have the passion to visit, revisit and discover more about it.

One of the temples that I was so curious about was the Angkor temple Ta Prohm. You know Lara Croft in the hit movie Tomb Raider? Ta Prohm temple became the iconic place to shoot the mentioned film. Paramount was charged US $10,000 per day for seven days to film there, amazing isn’t it? Aside from being a lovely place to shoot the film, iconic growing trees through the ruins are present at Ta Prohm and so attractive.

Catching the early sky let me appreciate more the simplicity of the place. I was also amused by those aggressive and playful monkeys around the temples, they seems so sturdy that could drag my bags away in just one glimpse. Monkeys around the temple are so catchy. Others are like mother and children that are happy eating their foods and maybe also busy noticing many people touring around their home (temples).

There are many Cambodian kids that are also selling souvenir items like key chains and ref magnets around the temple and others are vendors of the maps of Cambodia and selling books about the history of Angkor Wat. In the book they are selling, you could read there a lot about how the Angkor Wat temples were built. This includes stories like Cambodian gods and that Angkor Wat was dedicated to Vishnu, a Hindu deity.

Even on these days, the temples still used as a place to worship, wherein monks and believers are noticeable around the place.

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Our one day tour in Angkor Wat led me to some important facts about the lovely place. The expensive Angkor Wat Pass was so worth it. Experience is indeed also a good investment. I would love to hear any thoughts from you, kindly share that in the comment section below. And if you like this post, never hesitate to share. Remember to share love and not hate ^.^