Angkor Wat, Cambodia

We just got back from a wonderful, week long trip to Cambodia and Vietnam. In my mind, there are two types of vacations, the relaxing ones where you lay on a beach all day and the adventurous ones where you’re constantly on the go and trying to see and experience as much as you possibly can. This was definitely one of the latter… We were gone for 7 days and had so many wonderful experiences that there’s no way I can sum it all up in one posting, so I’m going to break it up into several and start with the highlight of the trip which was Angkor Wat. But, let me start at the beginning… We left Manila on Saturday morning with our friends, the Fischellis’ family, and pretty much spent all day traveling (connected through Bangkok). We landed in Siem Reap, Cambodia around 3pm and I was very impressed with their airport. I’ve been to some pretty remote places and some pretty sketchy airports in the world, so I really was expecting the worst. However, Siem Reap has built a new International airport which is very small, but very clean, organized, and just plain nice. First impressions of the place were very good based on this initial experience. Once we got out of the airport and into the city itself, it also proved to be very nice. It is small, clean and very easy to get around in. The people were very friendly and all in all, I highly recommend this place to anyone to go visit. For the rest of the first night, we just decided to relax around the hotel with some time at the pool dinner at the local restaurant. The hotel we stayed at was very nice and the configuration couldn’t be better. We had two rooms next to each other on the second floor and right outside our doors was “the library” which is a nice open air area with a few tables and a veranda overlooking the city. So at night, we were able to put all the kids down to bed, crack the doors of the rooms, and then the adults could hang out in a beautiful setting with a few drinks and talk (while always watching out for the large mosquitoes and many geckos lining the walls and ceiling). All in all, it was a very nice and relaxing way to start the vacation.



We got an early start the next morning. Once we left the hotel, we all headed to Angkor Wat. This is the most famous temple complex in Cambodia (depicted on their national flag) built in the early 12th century. This place truly was amazing to see and I feel extremely fortunate that we are all able to visit such unique places in this world and be face to face with such historic and cultural sites. I carried Jones in a backpack carrier and the girls did great walking the grounds with no (ok, very few) complaints. Due to where the sun was positioned (early morning), we went the reverse way through the complex than most tourists take and started at the back and walked through the complex towards the front. This was really cool as we were not constantly mobbed with a bunch of other tourists (even though it really wasn’t that crowded) and the sites kept getting better and more spectacular the further we went into it. As we went through, the sun was behind us in the East, so we were able to get some great pictures the whole way through with the sun at our backs. Angkor Wat is just an amazing site which really takes your breath away. I personally love ancient history and really get excited about visiting such fascinating sites.

Angkor Wat is a very large complex which is surrounded by a moat and outer wall which is 2.2 miles long. Inside the complex itself are 3 rectangular galleries with 5 towers at the inner most gallery. The city of Siem Reap is in the region of Angkor which was the ancient capital area of the Khmer empire. Within the area of Angkor, there were over 1,000 temples built between the 9th and 15th centuries. The word Angkor is the Khmer word for capital and the word Wat means temple. Therefore, Angkor Wat is roughly translated to “Capital Temple”. There are many other temples in the Angkor area which we visited that were all unique and amazing in their own ways, but I’ll get to those in subsequent blogs. The Angkor Wat site is the most famous because it is the largest temple in the area and the best preserved.

It took us over two hours to walk all the way through the complex. We had an excellent tour guide who was patient enough to work with us at our own pace which you can imagine was quite slow with 5 kids. I feel we were able to explore quite a bit of the temple and it’s amazing to see the wonderful architecture and level of detail in the many bas-reliefs throughout the complex. I think the kids enjoyed being little explorers and Aleah was even asking some very insightful questions. Ellery was just as excited to find every bug and rock that she could along the way and I think the history of the place was rather lost on her. We also just made sure to get lots of pictures of Jones there to prove to him one day that he really was there as I’m sure the experience will not be long remembered by him.




















The next morning Bill and I even got up at 4:30am before the rest of the families and headed back to Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise and take some pictures. This was a great experience as I sat in front of one of the ponds directly in front of the temple to catch day break and the colors in the sky over the temple and the picturesque beauty were a wonderful sight to see. Between day break and actual sunrise, we went into the temple and explored the completely empty structure. This was a completely different experience than the day before as Bill and I were the only ones in the whole building (that we could see) compared to the many tourists that were in it the day before. Very unique and surreal, to say the least. Bill and I separated there and he stayed inside to get more pictures inside the temple during the actual sunrise and I went back to the pond to get some nice pictures of the sun actually coming up over the temple and capture the images reflecting in the pond. I think I got some nice pictures, but this is the moment when I really wish I had a much nicer camera.

To wrap up the section on Angkor Wat, we made one more special trip there… On the last morning we were in Siem Reap, I took Aleah and Ellery to ride the hot air balloon up to look out over Angkor Wat (while Julie and Jones went shopping in town). This was a cool experience which I think the kids really enjoyed (because they got to go up in the balloon), but the day was sort of hazy and the view wasn’t that clear. It was definitely a unique experience, but not the highlight of the trip. That’s about all for now and the stories will continue from our other adventures in future blogs.









This picture was taken on Ellery's 5th birthday! And no, I didn't buy her the horse.






Farewell for now…