Travels with Hayley

Out pre 7am to pick up the laundry (clean pants, the absolute joy!) This is obviously more of a night time vibes kind of town as very little was open at this time of the morning , the supermarket was still shuttered at 7.15am and bar a couple of tiny shops and food stands, there was not a lot of people about or frankly a whole lot going on! I did however see a shop setting up for the day – I think they are a big fan of Christmas 😂

Giving it up as a bad job I headed back to the hotel and sat in the very nice reception area in order to get some WiFi that had a speed ever so slightly faster than glacial, and then headed into breakfast. I’ve not managed a hotel breakfast yet (it’s early, there’s so many smells, everyone else has picked/ransacked over the buffet – it’s just not really my jam…) but I thought I’ve give this one a try as it looked a bit fancy. They had all the normal toast, cereal, fruit, pancakes, fried rice, noodles etc options but this one also had a made to order omelette bar and a choose your own toppings noodle soup bar so an absolute plethora of options to choose from! I had – drumroll please – 2 brioche rolls with strawberry jam 😂 Turns out my sense of adventure does not kick in until post 9am!

Onto the bus and out for our temples tour. We stopped at a few roadside stalls on the way and Kom kept popping out of the bus – turns out he was looking for some cakes that his grandma used to make that are common in this region. We were a bit early as most sellers hadn’t got theirs cooked yet but we struck gold at the third or fourth try and he bought a box for us all to try. These were lovely! They are made from palm with a texture like a very moist/damp muffin and a runny coconut milk centre. Not too sweet and very breakfasty!

We walked across a bridge to get to the first temple and I was just absolutely blown away from the first moment. It’s probably time to admit the temples were the thing I was least looking forward to on this tour, I thought I’d be bored and they wouldn’t be very exciting, ancient history never having really been my thing.

I could not have been more wrong. I was transported, it was incredible. Just this bridge had dozens of huge warriors carved from stone ‘holding’ it up. The bridge alone would be a major tourist attraction in itself and it’s the most minute fraction of what is here.

You could visit a temple every day for 10 years and not see them all, how incredible is that. It might help put it in context how breathtaking it is that Kom has visited, in his words, a few hundred or thousand times and he still kept stopping and getting excited to take more photos.

They are shockingly intact – I think I was expecting a few stones in the ground and ‘imagine there was a tower here, imagine it was 20ft high, imagine that big piece of grass there used to be a banquet hall, use your imagination’ kind of thing but there was no need for any of that, they were in such good condition you were instantly transported.

We climbed in and around them and marvelled at everything, you felt compelled to take a photo of every single thing you saw but you just can’t capture it on a screen. It’s impossible to illustrate the magnitude, the scale and the sense of wonder with just a picture, you have to experience it, not just see it.

We joined a few people who were waiting to get into a small alcove – this part of the structure hasn’t eroded away at all and because of that, the wall relief inside of a woman is in perfect condition. She’s named the perfect lady and there’s a shrine in there with flowers and incense burning all the time, they are so reverent about her, it was lovely – these temples are still so relevant to Cambodians today it seems, they aren’t just relics of an ancient past to them, they are part of who they are.

It was all so special and lovely until we passed through a chamber where a load of bats were nesting – I’m not sure if you’ve even smelt a concentrated amount of bat urine, but I’m here on your behalf to tell you not to seek it out. Good grief it was revolting. I was glad when we left for a brief sit down and a cool coconut (casually macheted open in front of you…) before heading back into the wilds of the past again.

To the next temples, one of which is where I think they filmed Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie – or maybe it was the one after this, I might have lost track! I’ve never seen it but I’m going to now, just to see what I recognise.

The towers of one temple all had faces built into them – how on earth did they do this over 1,000 years ago, it is beyond comprehension. At the start of another complex were 2 beautiful, enormous pools of water, they were so calm and serene, the whole place felt so compellingly at peace and harmony.

Even though there were obviously other tourists around, there was so much space you would find yourself standing by yourself in pockets of total silence and the sense of occasion just washing over you, the whole thing had a hypnotic effect and was so much more than I could have ever imagined. There were loads of butterflies in every colour flying all around us and it felt really so special to be allowed to be there. We could hear the chanting and music from another, newer temple that the monks still used and it all added to the atmosphere of being slightly removed from the land of mere mortals and becoming part of some more spiritual and divine. I found the whole thing really moving in a way I wasn’t expecting.

Another way I wasn’t expecting to be moving was up the hundreds of tiny , immensely steep wooden stairs to reach the very top of the temple – but if you’ve come all the way here you may as well do it properly so I made it up there for the spectacular views. The trip down was so steep we had to come down them backwards!

Some interesting facts – the king had 6,000 concubines at any one time – he must have been a very busy, not to mention tired man. The 2 beautiful pools I mentioned before, one was for the king alone, the other was for the 6,000 ladies. Seems totally reasonable and hygienic.. It’s also where the king was cremated and laid to rest – people do always want to be scattered in their happy place don’t they – the man had 6,000 lady lovers, if he wasn’t happy there where would he be?!

All the kings had ‘celestial dancers’ based in the temples – beautiful women who danced for God – with their boobs out, according to all the carvings. Which by the by, all of the boobs on said carvings were shiny – it’s where men walk past and rub them….🙄 Women weren’t just around for dancing and girlfriend duty though, apparently there’s carvings on the walls that show at least in the 12th and 13th century girls were allowed to go to school, join the military and be a bodyguard to the king, so very progressive for the time.

Back to boobs swiftly before we move on, there was a plant growing out of the wall of one of the temples – Kom was telling us that when a woman is ready to give up breast feeding, she eats this and it makes her breast milk really bitter and so the baby goes right off it! Harsh but effective.

On the way out we walked straight into an enormous troop of monkeys who were trying to grab anything they could from people’s bags and hands. There were loads of baby ones scampering about, they look like tiny wizened old men, very cute but they are all an absolute bloody menace, you can’t take your eyes off them for a second or they’ll be hanging off the hem of your trousers as happened to poor, traumatised Sarah – who had been such a fan of monkeys only seconds beforehand but swiftly changed her mind! Fortunately an alpha male altercation distracted them, with a screaming fight going on between the gents with all the others piling in to see what was going on – in the resulting chaos we made our escape, pausing briefly to take a picture of a brave baby that got highly embarrassed at his particulars showing when we started photographing him and had to swiftly cover them up with his hands 😜

We stopped for lunch where I had a papaya salad which was nice enough although slightly warm which was a bit odd and a lime drink which took the back of my throat off – they might have gone a bit overboard with the amount of lime juice 😂 We were running slightly behind schedule and so it was the quickest lunch ever – we were literally out of the door as I was chewing my last mouthful! Kids swarmed around us as we entered and exited the bus trying to sell magnets, souvenirs etc “Lady you buy, one dollaaaaar, one dollaaaar!” You can’t buy anything because it just encourages the adults to keep sending them out there instead of to school and also because – well it’s just total tat isn’t it! Sad though.

The next temple we visited was built by the king at the time for his mother – what a nice son! Or a snivelling mummy’s boy, depending on your general disposition I suppose. It was built between 1050-1060 and was just absolutley spectacular, the forest had totally taken over and tree roots had covered all of the temple roofs. It was like some kind of gothic secret glade (or super creepy if you’re Martin – see his comment a couple of posts ago!)

Slightly denting the enchanted magical forest feel was the social media influencers with their personal photographers (I’m not talking their husbands, you can hire a private photographer to come with you to capture content for your Instagram/You Tube channel…I cannot even…) who were doing ridiculous poses in the most overdressed outfits – we saw one in Perspex platform heels (I can’t oversell how much climbing about you have to do in this place, I was filthy when I got back. Kudos to her I guess for managing…) and one in a pale pink silk ensemble that included a tiny bra top. Bearing in mind it’s a religious monument and the dress code very clearly states you have to cover knees, shoulders and stomachs she’s lucky to have got away with it. I’m sure her ‘followers’ will be delighted with her elegance though 🙄 A couple were also having their wedding pictures taken there which I thought was quite sweet so maybe we’ll let them off. Maybe 😂

Anyway, old person rant over, back to the temples! There’s fascinating glimpses of how they were made, for example all the stones have holes bored in them, this was to lift them via a pulley system. Not only is it amazing enough they built things to these wildly intricate designs, to a quality that has lasted for thousands of years, that they carved everything out of stone, decorated everything to the n’th degree and every piece of carving and architecture tells a story, they also plastered them all inside, there are still remnants of plaster in places. They’ve also found evidence that the temples were totally painted too, some in white, some with red detailing and some in gold. Can you just imagine these painted in gold?! And what must have it been like to live back then? We’re talking a over a thousand years ago. You’re knocking about in your scratchy linen tunic, likely infested with all manner of fleas and other delightful parasites, cooking your gruel and mutton over an open fire and your only entertainment is if someone local happens to be a dab hand on the lute and the next thing you know, this palace beyond all imagination of scale and beauty, sparkling in gold turns up on the doorstep? No wonder people would believe in the gods! Mind you, all the locals were likely slaves who died under the crushing weight of building the thing – but that’s lacking in a bit of romance isn’t it so we’ll skip over that version!

We got back to the hotel and I got a bikini on and straight into the pool, the humidity had been so high today, we were literally pouring with sweat the entire time so a swim felt like bliss. I popped myself on a sun lounger but inevitably, though the sun had been at Hades levels all day, the minute I laid down black clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped 😂

I decided to have a little evening to myself so after a quick change into a nice frock I walked down to the river and sat on a bench on the front for an hour, writing diaries, listening to all of the babble and excitement of everyone socialising and laughing, drinking in the sights and smells of everything around me. There was a few spots of rain which seemed a good enough reason to take myself off to a very fancy restaurant with heavy silver cutlery, white linen tablecloths and beautiful, sculptural chandeliers for some dinner. I had fish amok which is a traditional kind of curry, it’s got coconut milk, egg scrambled through, fish, mushrooms, herbs. It’s very nice although I felt I needed to add a bit more seasoning – mind you, I think that about most things at home so that seems more like a me problem than a them problem! It came with jasmine rice and I had a freshly squeezed pineapple juice and a bottle of water. I sat for ages by the window, eating, reading and generally revelling in the fact there were no bugs falling in my dinner!

After paying the wildly hefty bill of £12 (Small story – if you pay by card anywhere here they make you sign your name on the slip. Look at where it is they are pointing for you to sign 😂) I decided it would be rude not to check out their rooftop bar.

There was a flurry of activity as the staff decided the table I chose had a tablecloth that was just not up to scratch so that was whisked away and replaced in the space of a minute with many apologies. Once everything was to their satisfaction I sat overlooking the river and all the street vendors, listening to the kids setting off firecrackers and the live singer who did an interesting set list including Cambodian classics mixed with a bit of Lionel Richie, enjoying a ginger ale with lime while congratulating myself on my excellent life choices 😍

it got too late for me to be out gallivanting (9.15pm…) I made my way back to the hotel, past the street vendors selling beauty products, jewellery, piles of snails to snack on and so much more.

Got back to the room at exactly the same time as Kerry and despite our best efforts to be sensible we couldn’t curb the chatting until 11pm – there’s just so much to catch up on! We’re instigating a little Diet Coke and bedtime snack ritual – we shared a couple of intriguingly flavoured Kit Kat chunkies – cookies and cream and raisin ‘n’ cookie. We decided that while both were delicious (it’s a kitkat, what’s not to like…) maybe the wrappers all got muddled up in the factory as we could could detect precisely no cookies, cream or raisins!

Alarm set for 4.30am as we’re leaving at 5am tomorrow to watch the sun rise over Ankor Wat 😍

Love you all millions xx