April 29, 2005

Cambodia and the Temples of Angkor

Temple then another temple then another temple then another temple and finish with another temple. We were staying in Siam Reap; this town seems to be booming from the close proximity to the Angkor temple area. This boom in tourism inevitably brings a lot of poor people flocking to the city to try and cash in. The evidence of Cambodia’s chaotic past is clearly on show, every street corner has landmine victims, young and old.

The temples are truly amazing and as the Lonely Planet suggests, Angkor is ‘a symbol of nationhood, of fierce pride, a fingers-up to the world that says no matter how bad things have got lately, you can’t ignore the fact that Cambodians built Angkor and it doesn’t get better than that.’ It’s true – temples don’t get much better. The complex of Angkor is not just a small group of impressive temples; the surrounding jungle seems to contain temple after temple, each different from the next. It would take weeks to properly explore all of them, though to be honest you’d need to be a bit of a temple enthusiast (is there a term for that?) to be able to keep exploring them for long. We took three days to visit about ten temples and then felt a bit ‘templed-out’.

It’s lucky that the Cambodians have Angkor as a stepping-stone for bringing their country more in line with its neighbour Thailand, if tourism is in fact the answer. After having visited the temples, we would have liked to have seen more of the country but unfortunately our time was tight.

Posted by jon jack at 9:03 AM