After I touched down at Siem Reap airport, I was picked up by a tuk tuk driver sent free by the hotel. What I didn’t realise is that this is an opportunity for the driver to get business as a driver for the rest of the trip. However, I had already secured a driver by e-mail for my travels.
I met this driver at the hotel. But he’d brought his “cousin”. (He would later refer to this cousin as his nephew in an e-mail.) And it was this cousin, not the him, whom I’d been communicating with all this while would bring me around. I did not like this, but I thought I’d go with the flow.
So I go by tuk tuk to get my 3 day pass at Angkor Wat and also, to enter Angkor Wat at 5pm. If you have tickets for the next day, you can get into the park after 5pm without it counting as a day. It was my plan to see Angkor Wat at the end of the day, and then at sunrise another day. So this post will encompass both days of Angkor Wat.
Everyone who goes to Siem Reap comes to visit Angkor Wat, once the capital of the Khmer.
The City of Temples is surrounded by a large moat with two entrances, one to the east, one to the west, which is the main entrance.
The moat was so large, I thought at first we were passing a river.
The sky was rather hazy and the sunset was quite unspectacular. Still I knew I’d come to take photos and practice shooting again. It was rough, but I think I managed some good photos by sheer volume rather than skill.
By the time I emerged from Angkor Wat, it was dark and I had difficulty finding the driver. And when I did find him after 7 minutes of searching, he said yes, he’d seen be looking for him. Which made me wonder why he didn’t call out to me, like I’d seen other drivers do. My alarm bells were ringing by this time, but I thought maybe I was being a little too harsh. I should give him a chance.
On the third day of my visit to Siem Reap I woke up early to capture sunrise photos at Angkor Wat without tripod.
Lit only by the lights of the tuk tuk, we headed through the cold air from Siem Reap back to the temple complex. By the time we’d arrived there were a fair amount of people, but it wasn’t too crowded. The guards diligently checked every ticket before allowing entry in.
I headed to the pool on the right side of the complex. I’d read that the one on the left – the actual reflecting pool – would get very crowded and noisy.
In the dark, I waited for sunrise, which was again, not terribly spectacular. In fact, I had to adjust my WB settings to get these colours:
By the time light fully broke, I found myself back on the main path toward Angkor Wat. It was so quiet on the side that I was on, with so much space to myself, that I was surprised to see the crowd on the other side.
I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with that. I wouldn’t be able to get to the water’s edge at all.
Dinner was an unimpressive meal at Angkor Family Restaurant.
This is the map of my travels on Day 1 in Siem Reap