The central question: how to visit as much as possible of Angkor?

The Bakong Temple, Rolous Group

First, it’s possible to see all the 75+ temples if you have the time, energy, inclination, interest, and money (yes, it’s expensive).  

Second : the tours are for the temples- the city expanse of roads and canals are not in the focus (if visible at all, as they are covered by jungle). 

Third : most people won’t want or need to visit all temples. So quite intuitively, there are specific tours of Angkor that cover much of the city, temples, and area. There could be others, and you could technically cover many more on your own with the tuktuk, but I took three tours and were quite satisfied with my coverage ( but still less than 15)

These are: Small Circle Tour , Big Circle Tour and the Rolous Group Tour.

I will explain all three in detail going ahead. 

Clarification: “tour” does not refer to group tourism. It refers to the collection of temples on a route designed such that a trip covers temples of a similar nature efficiently.

This tours 5-6 temples each, though the guide can do more if you pay more. This can be by car, tuktuk or guided tour in bus.

The City of Angkor

Most people today wouldn’t be aware of the immensity of the city of Angkor, the capital of The Khmer Empire. At over 1,000 sq km, it would be equivalent of today’s modern cities and certainly one of the largest pre-industrial ever. 

To put into perspective, modern-day Tokyo, the largest city on earth is 2,194 sq kilometers, Los Angeles is 1,300 sq km, New York in the USA is about 780 sq 

The Victory Gate to Angkor Thom

km, London is 610 sq km, and Mumbai is just 157 sq km. 

While these cities today are large, it must be remembered that Angkor was already 1000 sq km a thousand years ago. At that time, most of these cities quoted were either hamlets or didn’t exist at all. The economics, logistics and lifestyles were vastly different then, and running a city that large without modern appliances would have a gargantuan  administrative job, and one that would have needed intellectual capital far higher than may be that of today!

As would be expected, there was a large water body created near the city, and many scholars put the reason for the demise of the city to the changes in the water supply. There were canals and roads in place even then, but perhaps their management wasn’t as good. Whatever it may be, what is left for us to see today is still very awe-inspiring, and not a little humbling. 

There are five gates to the city of Angkor Thom, which houses many of the other temples in a square form. The one shown here is the Victory Gate, where soldiers victorious in battle would enter the city; the other is the Gate of the Dead, for losing armies, and three others dot the four directions. 

The throbbing powerful dynamos that are the cities of today could well be like Angkor, a thousand years hence. Sobering, and inevitable, much as we would deny it.

The Angkor National Museum

https://angkornationalmuseum.com/

This museum houses a nice collection of art, statues and glimpses of Khmer culture as well as some artifacts from the Angkor Complex. Its a short ride from the city centre. 

Don’t miss the Buddhas room. It’s a beautiful collection of 1,000 buddhas tastefully displayed and lit. Each of the notches you see in the walls is a buddha, each different. 

In December 2022, entry fee was US$10 per head. Could feel a bit steep, but it’s a nice enough stroll thru it, and you get to see many of the artifacts that have been moved here from Angkor to preserve them. Worth a look. 

 

 

Siem Reap surprises!

 

The city

This city has evolved into an organized tourist hub, and when we visited in December 2022, it was quite a revelation for its cleanliness, roads, the Angkor complex, and transport.

There are many hotels at all price points and all ratings and reviews, of course, as expected in one of the most visited sites in Southeast Asia. Quite a few in December 2022 were empty. Many suffered badly in the covid years, and in 2022, we heard that tourism had still not recovered, That may have changed now that China has opened outbound tourism, but in 2022, almost no Indians or Chinese were there, and there was a smattering of other nationalities in the city. Consequently, the city was quiet and not crowded, and it presented itself very differently!

Tuktuks and Scooters!

 

Siem Reap is a small city, and the tuktuks are everywhere. As a visitor, you could hire tuk-tuks for the day (which is what we did. It was preferable as you will never know the local actual one-way fares and will end up feeling vaguely overpaid). We negotiated US$15 for the day- and Bannu was quite willing to go anywhere we wanted, as well as to take us around the temple routes.

The other way is to hire a taxi (the hotel will do it for you) ; this was US$75 a day in December 2022. We took the taxi to visit the Rolous Group (more of this group of temples later) which is about 30 km distance from Siem Reap. We found this so much more comfortable than a tuktuk on open roads. The roads outside Siem Reap tend to deteriorate a bit, but nothing to break bones.

Many tourists hire the tuk tuk for the day even to visit the temples (we did this). It was quite comfortable and an experience! Usually all the tuk tuk drivers bring waterbottles in a cooler with them, and those that we interacted with were helpful and pleasant. Just don’t expect them to tell you details of the temples you visit; they are not guides. You will need to do your homework – and there’s a ton of information on every temple in Angkor available online. Short of taking a guide (not a bad idea) , this is the best way to really immerse in, and appreciate the scale and history of Angkor.

TukTuk Pick Up!

 

Most hotels offer either pick up or drop off as part of your booking. We had chosen an airport pick up. We usually always prefer airport pick up as part of our booking, even though it may cost more than taking an airport taxi or Uber. Arriving tired in a new city, sometimes at night or very early morning, we have no intention of navigating the intricacies of fares and maps and always being alert about fare/ route cheating (more commonplace than you think, even in Europe).

In Siem Reap, we were very amused to find our pickup was a tuktuk (the larger version of the rickshaws so much part of an Indian’s life). Had all our bags arrived with us, one wonders how we would have accommodated us and the bags in the tuktuk! But the driver, Bannu, was nice (he was with us all through our stay in Siem Reap). The road into the city was empty- no traffic at all! – and the city itself was quiet and dozing off in the afternoon. It woke up in the evening and early morning, of course, but the afternoon was strangely quiet.

And even more amusing, four days later, our airport drop was in a full 20-seater minibus, only for us! This was charged separately, of course.

Baggage left behind!

We landed, but one of our main bags didn’t- apparently it was still in Singapore and wouldn’t arrive in Siem Reap until the next day. This was a little odd as there was an evening flight as well from Singapore. But what was bemusing was the speed and readiness of the lost / delayed baggage counter. The moment we reached the counter, the person handed us a laminated paper with pictures of bags and sizes and once we identified the bag size from the pictures, the person filled in the forms himself and within 15 minutes handed us US$100 as compensation for the late arrival of the bag. The next morning, the bag was delivered to our hotel. All smooth and without any follow-up from our side. That’s one advantage perhaps of a world class airline like Singapore Airlines.

Apparently, this is a well-known occurrence, and everyone’s used to it! Or maybe we were just lucky as there wasn’t much traffic. Or maybe the person was just very efficient. Either way, while a bit inconvenient, we weren’t complaining. The main bags with the food came with us!

And as a happy consequence of lack of clothes, we had to shop – and found a store called Ten11 (on Sivutha Boulevard- recommended by our Tuktuk driver+ guide Bannu), with some good designs, quality and value for money, courtesy Singapore Airlines US$100! What we bought was very useful when we landed in Hanoi on December 25.

Arriving Siem Reap Airport

Siem Reap is the gateway airport for Angkor Wat. The old airport where we landed was about 6 km from the city centre, a small, neat airport designed in the traditional Cambodian style with no jetways- you walk down the aircraft to the small arrival hall. It was a quaint airport, and for some reason which we still can’t fathom, tourist traffic in December 2022 was so low that the airport and city were practically empty. You can imagine what was the crowd in Angkor Wat, but more on that later.

Update Dec 2023: Since we visited in December 2022, this airport, opened in 1932 and which was coded VDSR or REP, has closed in 2023 and air operations have moved to the new one made by the Chinese, some distance away.

The new airport, coded VDSA, is 40 km east of Angkor and 50 km from Siem Reap, considerably increasing travel cost and time for tourists, but presumably they needed greater space to handle the traffic (projected at 7 million a year), and to avoid damage to Angkor. We hear charges are upto US$ 8 per person in shared vehicle to Siem Reap- you need to check latest prices. The old one was very close to Angkor and in fact, you could see the main temple, if seated on the left side as you approached for landing.

We took the Singapore Airways route, the usual well known SQ424 flight with a 1.5-hour stopover at Singapore Changi and then the new B737 Max to Siem Reap, about 2 hours away. The connecting flight to Siem Reap was from a different terminal but in Changi transfers are all easy and fast thru the inter-terminal train. Remember though, that unlike India, in Changi, the security checks are at the boarding gates, not at one central point. Plus, the staff there are rather rough about not letting water bottles of any kind get through. Much is good about Singapore, but this attitude is unnecessary (have seen and gone through this roughness more than once now).

This SQ flight is sometimes delayed as it’s the only one in the morning giving connections to Siem Reap; so, if you miss this, then you lose the day; our flight was also held back a bit to await some passengers from elsewhere, but there wasn’t any major delay. Apprehensions about the B737 MAX have faded a bit, and most people, I think, did not even realize it was the much-debated aircraft they were riding on.

The flight was uneventful, though I do think Singapore Airlines product has deteriorated slightly in terms of food quality and quantity; or it may be that unlike a few years ago, we have flown on several airlines, so our perspective is better now. Nevertheless, there is nothing much to complain about!

The old Siem Reap airport was bare bones. Nice and neat, but that’s about all. The new one apparently will be much more modern, but doubtful if we will visit Seam Reap again, so can’t comment on it.

Siem Reap- the gateway airport to Angkor

Cambodia doesn’t have direct connections from India, though indirect ones are good. We have primarily two gateways, Bangkok and Singapore. You can use Thai Air Lines+ Bangkok Airways route via Bangkok, or Singapore Airlines via Singapore. Connections are to both Phnom Pehn and Siem Reap. Most people end up at Siem Reap.

We didn’t take Bangkok as there was too much stopover time at Bangkok.  The Singapore Airlines was an A380+ B737 combo. SQ was more expensive but then everyone to their preference. (KrisMiles didn’t hurt, as well!).

Cambodia , Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

 

The famed Angkor Wat. 

“Angkor” is the city and “Wat” means temple. This massive complex is the largest Hindu temple complex in the world, and part of what was once a huge city and civilization but today stands a somber reminder of what awaits everyone who consider themselves invincible. We wanted to visit it for its history, its fabled mystery and its scale- and there was no time like the present!

And what did we find? Angkor Wat is exactly what they all said it was, and more. We were extremely impressed. In December 2023, Angkor Wat was voted as the 8^th wonder of the world, and having seen it, it deserved to be.