Anchored at Angkor Wat

I’m in Cambodia! Country #2! And believe it or not these are familiar surroundings. I visited Cambodia and Siem Reap (home of Angkor Wat and a collection of incredible temples and ancient cities) back in 2010. At that time I did a whirlwind tour of the temples over 2 days (to check it off the bucket list). This time I’m back in Siem Reap and the town of Battambang for 2 1/2 weeks and will give it the time it deserves. I’ll focus this post on some of the amazing temples and ancient ruins that I visited and follow up with a post on “the best of the rest” of my time in Cambodia.

Around Siem Reap

I will spare you the gory details of my hundreds of pictures of the various temples, monuments and ruins around Siem Reap. Instead, I’m restraining myself to share only a handful of pictures from my favourite sites. And I’ve thrown in a video of Prasat Preah Khan…for good measure 😉

Prasat Preah Vihear

So getting to this temple was a TREK!!! Located on the Northern Cambodian border with Thailand, it took 4 hours to drive to this mountaintop temple which sits on the edge of a 525m cliff. I had wanted to see this temple back in 2010, but Cambodia and Thailand were literally at war, fighting over the ownership of this temple. The conflict has since been resolved, but ironically parts of the temple were destroyed in the fighting. The incredible views and experience were definitely worth the wait!

Koh Ker

So a fun little story about my visit to this temple (which was about 2.5 hours from Siem Reap, but was part of the same FULL day tour to Prasat Preah Vihear). Before entering the site of Koh Ker, our tour group (3 people) had lunch at an open air restaurant which was nestled up along the entrance to some of the ruins. Towards the end of our meal a local gentlemen, from the table next to ours, started talking to us in English and thanking us for visiting Cambodia. He then proceeded to toast us with his rice wine (and us with our waters 😊).

A few minutes later he brings over most of his table, introduces the local dignitaries with him and hands us cans of beer. We then proceeded to have many toasts (them with their rice wine and us with our beer) as all of the local dignitaries made speeches and thanked us for visiting Cambodia. So as it turns out they were celebrating – today, Koh Ker was officially declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site!! I imagine they got tipped off a few days early and we were lucky enough to join in on their party!!