I know, just from the title it’s ridiculous that we went to a country for just two days. But it was part of a 3 week trip to Thailand and Singapore and better to go visit Angkor Wat for a little bit than never go at all!
We realized once we got here that we had done very little research on logistics, and only had an ancient art history book (Angkor by Dawn Rooney). But I think we did a pretty good job figuring it out once we got here, so here is our itinerary and some tips if you, too, only have two days in Angkor Wat.
We arrived at the Golden Mango Inn at 10pm after a long long day from Thailand that included taxis, late ferries, vans, planes and a tuk tuk. I had just found it online, and we were grateful when we arrived that it was a lovely place, tucked away on a quiet street in Siem Reap with a garden, pool and restaurant for $30USD/night with breakfast included. They sent a driver to pick us up from the airport at no extra charge, and Mr Kong as he introduced himself to us was there waiting with a sign with our names on it.
He asked us when we would like to go to Angkor Wat in the morning and we said I guess 7:30am, and he said okay he’d see us then. And so in that way he became our driver for the entire trip.
We found an excellent blog post about the best way to visit the temples, and made up a mish mash itinerary from that. Read their great blog post for sure when making your itinerary! A friend had recommended we see a temple outside of the main Angkor park called Beng Mealea and to visit the Landmine Museum, so we tried to incorporate those without really knowing where everything was. (Beng Mealea was pretty far away so we didn’t end up going, but went to Bantaey Srei instead which was closer.)
The hotel had quite literally a menu of options for tours. We could choose a tuk tuk (the best!) for $15 for the day (+$5 for sunrise) or a car with AC for more money. Since we had arranged with Mr Kong our tuk tuk driver we just paid him directly which was probably better for him anyway.
As for tours there was the “small circle” (Angkor Wat & Angkor Thom) and the “big circle” (Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon, Preah Rup, Bantaey Kdei, Ta Prohm, Ta Keo) which if you look at the road on the map (built by French colonizers in the early-mid 1900s) makes a big circle.
But we weren’t restricted to one specific tour because Mr Kong just took us wherever we wanted to go. So we chose to see the famous Angkor Wat temple first, then do the big circle tour and then get out and see the countryside. The blog ingeniously suggested doing the big circle tour backwards to avoid the crowds, but because we got a “late” start at 8am and spent a long time at Angkor Wat and eating lunch by Angkor Thom, we didn’t start the “big circle tour” until afternoon and it really wasn’t as crowded as we had expected it to be. Having the physical guidebook with us was actually really great, because at each temple we could read the 1-3 pages devoted to that temple and get to stand in front of what she was talking about to understand it. Or else we could have hired a guide for $35 but I didn’t want to be tied to talking endlessly about all the art at every temple. Every amazing carving refers to some epic-ass Hindu story or king’s battle which, frankly, there’s only so much of that I can take. (Can you tell I’m not an art history buff??) The temples are amazing just sitting in them quietly as well. If you don’t have a guide no worries–there are plenty of street vendors selling guidebooks for $1 in front of every temple (and baskets and scarves and magnets..)
Day One
Morning: Stop at the entrance to buy our passes, where they take your picture and print nontransferable tickets you must have on you at all times in the park. A 1-day pass is $20, 3-day pass is $40. We had stupidly changed every single US dollar we had to Cambodian Riels promptly upon arriving at the airport, so for two 3-day passes ($80) it was 336,000 riels (just FYI in case you pay in riels!). But if you have dollars just keep dollars. Using riels that first day before we went to an ATM and got dollars was confusing, not because of the currency itself but because everything–literally everything–is listed in USD so every time we had to convert with vendors and figure it out. It was basically 4,000 riels per dollar, depending on who you talked to.
Visit Angkor Wat (instead of the main door just after the moat enter through the very right hand side door which was built for elephants to walk through and has monkeys chilling by it, once inside the door turn left to walk back to the main door on the inside of the wall and look at the carvings, stop in front of the reflecting pool on the left side of the causeway for an iconic photo of all 5 towers, see the Gallery of Bas-Reliefs, wait in line to go to the sacred third level Bakan Sanctuary).
Eat lunch by Bayon at Angkor Thom (lots of touristy food stalls for $7/plate, get lok lak beef w veggies and amok curry with fish, typical Cambodian dishes)
Afternoon: Visit Preah Khan (enter through the North gate from the road, watch out for the policemen who offer to take your picture then ask for a tip, walk toward the East gate to sit in quiet silence with ruins all around you).
Visit Neak Pean (walk down the long wooden walkway with either dead-looking forest when it hasn’t been raining much, or gorgeous lake later in the rainy season, read about what each of the four square ponds mean with an island in the middle)
Visit Ta Som (enjoy the beautiful central courtyard)
Visit East Mebon (see what a difference a couple hundred years makes in engineering and architecture. This temple was built in the 900s by a previous king and is made of brick towers)
Drive through rice fields in East Baray
Visit Preah Rup (we spent so much time at each temple we didn’t finish the “big circle” so we watched the sunset here, there are big stairs and it’s a good place to see the sunrise or sunset because it has a tall unobstructed view of the forest in every direction. To avoid the crowds just sit one level down from the top where everyone else is 😉 )
At this point we could have had dinner and gone to the Phare Circus, a social enterprise “transforming the lives of Cambodian youth” that our friend had recommended (8pm show $18-$35) but we were so exhausted from our travels the day before we decided to call it quits and eat dinner at the Golden Mango Inn garden restaurant instead (only $4/plate) and get to sleep early for the sunrise.
Day Two
4:30am: Wake up and get the boxed breakfast we ordered from the hotel the night before–ask wherever you’re staying if they do that, they’re used to it!
5:08am: Hop in the tuk tuk with Mr Kong who was diligently waiting for us for a 5am departure. We arrived at Angkor Wat about 5:35 and joined the multitudes walking down the long long walkway to the temple (our phones told us we did more ‘steps’ these two days than any on the whole trip, even though it felt like we were sitting in the back of a tuk tuk the whole time!) We debated endlessly whether we should go to Angkor Wat like everyone else, or try to find a better place for the sunrise. But as we determined when choosing whether to walk the Camino Primitivo or the Camino Frances last year: if it’s your first time, walk the Camino Frances. Then you can choose to walk other paths. We were here: and we only had one day, so let’s go to the iconic place. But instead of gathering with literally 200 people at the reflecting pool where everyone wanted to take the picture of the sun rising behind the towers reflected in the pool, we entered the temple, climbed to the second level and walked to the very southeastern corner stairway facing east. From there we were completely alone with our little picnic breakfast and enjoyed the quietness of the temple at sunrise with the sounds of the forest around us, taking in how many sunrises had shone upon these very stones for almost 900 years. Then the disappointed sunrisers started coming to the east side of the temple around 6:40am — talking LOUDLY — when they realized the clouds took away their perfect photo…and so we left.
Visit Tah Prohm (see the amazing trees here growing over and into the walls of the temple, great example of restoration in progress in 2016 at least, get there before 8am when all the tour groups arrive)
Visit Bantaey Srei (a cool pink sandstone temple with intricate carvings about 30 min away, built about the same time as Preah Rup and East Mebon. you get to see rice fields and the countryside on the way, our friend Laura (with a great blog) recommended seeing the sunrise here so that’s an alternative to the crowded Angkor Wat but requires an even earlier wake up time 😉)
On the way back: Visit the Landmine Museum ($5/person). I’m not an emotional person but just sitting outside reading the introduction to Aki Ra’s story as a child soldier laying landmines for the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese army then spending his life after the war finding and dismantling them brought me to sobbing tears. There must have been some ethereal grief in the air that struck me deeper than my intellectual brain. The museum has actual landmines that he neutralized (before becoming internationally landmine certified in 2008 after which he stopped dismantling them, since the international protocol is to explode them at the site). His NGO prioritizes small villages that have had so many children in particular lose hands and legs. Most of the landmines are antipersonnel mines–designed to injure and maim as a tactic of war–because it costs more to care for an injured soldier than to bury him…and it only takes about 11 pounds of weight to set one off. The museum also has important recent Cambodian history, about Pol Pot the dictator, the Khmer Rouge, Vietnamese invasion and of course the terror of countless US-led bombing campaigns that destroyed people’s lives and left the countryside littered with unexploded bombs (UXOs). Basically, since independence from France in 1953, the country was in some era of devastating warfare from 1968 to the mid-1990s, making everyone over the age of 20 basically a survivor. Obviously I don’t know anything, as a foreigner, a Westerner, having been there for 2 days but the museum really changed my perspective, balancing the amazingness of humanity (temples & architecture) and the devastation (genocide & war). Go here.
We had lunch at a mediocre tourist restaurant Mr Kong took us to overlooking Srah Srang which is a lake-temple.
Then we drove through amazing wood and metalworking workshops on the outskirts of Siem Reap and through more countryside and these houses on stilts to Tonlé Sap. Tonlé Sap is this amazing lake that forms during the rainy season when the Mekong River backs up and the tributary Siem Reap River reverses its flow and creates a giant seasonal lake. The earliest form of Khmer agriculture was a type of deep-rooted rice that grew here. We didn’t go to the “floating village” because the guy told us it was $25/person (even though we looked up later you could get a boat for less) and we were tired and didn’t want to stay out late, and we really just wanted to look at the lake and countryside. On the way we passed Phnom (“hill”) Krom, where there is a temple but we didn’t go up to look at it.
After a brief rest at the hotel, we went to the dinner show at Koulen Restaurant, a huge pavilion buffet for $12/person with traditional dancing, some showing agricultural life in stories and others of women dressed like apsaras, the bejeweled dancers carvings that cover so many of the temples. But it was mediocre and Sammy got food poisoning there so, there you go. Since we booked with our driver though they fed him (with the other tuk tuk drivers in the back).
We wanted to see the famed Pub Street and King’s Road without having to go, so we asked Mr Kong to drive us through on the way home.
Over the 2 days we gave Mr Kong what he asked: $10/day for driving + $5 extra for going to the lake + $5 for taking us to the show + $5/day tip = $40 USD.
Things We Would Have Done Differently:
- Traveled to Siem Reap on a direct flight from Bangkok or Chiang Mai–coming all the way from Koh Phangan turned getting there into a 16 hour day and we were exhausted. (Taxi > ferry > bus > flight to Bangkok > flight to Siem Reap was too much!)
- Stayed 3 days instead of 2! We could have spent less time in the tuk tuk driving in between temples all day. We felt like mega-tourists the whole time, which is not our style!
All in all, visiting Cambodia was amazing, though exhausting since there was so much to see and experience. Even though we only had a couple days, it was worth it — hopefully this itinerary will help you see this historic place too even if you only have a few days to come!