I planned on spending 3 days to visit the all of the temples in the surrounding area and as such decided that on the first day I would head out to some of the slightly less temples further away from the city and leave the most famous ones for day 2. Heading out of town we first visited the temple Pre Rup. Pre Rup was a pretty awe-inspiring first temple as it was very large. The tmeple was shaped almost like a large pyramid and you could climb up the sides and stand at the top looking out over the world. Along the climb up and around the top there were some statues although it seemed that most of them had unfortuneatly been slightly destroyed either by the elements or people.
After visiting Pre Rup we continued heading further away from the main cluster and stopped next at Bantaey Srey. This temple was completely different from Pre Rup as it wasn't very big at all; however, the carvings that were present all over the structure were amazing. It seemed that most spaces where something could be carved onto the stone something had, and after visiting all of the other temples this one probably remains as the one with the best carvings.
Heading even further north we next stopped at Kbal Spean which wasn't much of a temple but there was a nice little waterfall flowing over some carvings in the rocks. At the parking lot there was also a small wildlife conservation organisation which had collected several monkeys, birds, turtles and other animals and was trying to breed them and return them to the wild. We got lucky when we arrived as they they were just starting a free tour of the animals so got to spend an hour learning about all of them as well. After Kbal Spean we started heading back towards the Siem Reap and made one final stop at Bantaey Samre which was a fair sized temple but not as impressive as the size of Pre Rup or the carvings of Bantaey Srey.
On day 2 we decided to see the most famous temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm in case by day 3 we couldn't make ourselves see more. The day started off by stopping at Angkor Wat, this temple is absolutely amazing. The sheer size of it is enourmous and the amount of work that must have gone into building it. The entire temple is surrounded by a wall and inside of this is a huge area with a few smaller buildings built inside. The main temple is built close to the back of the open yard and is extremely impressive. Within the main temple were 4 large towers (not sure what they're actually called), the ones you can see in the standard photo of Angkor Wat, but there were all closed off for restoration so we couldn't go up inside them.
After spending a few hours at Angkor Wat we headed off to the temples of Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom is a complex that contains several smaller temples: Bayon, Baphuon, Phimeanakas, the Terrace of Elephants, and some smaller ones that we didn't visit. I thought that Bayon was one of the most impressive temples that we visited, it contains hundreds of faces of the emporer carved into the walls so it seems that there is alwasy someone watching you. In addition there seems to have been very little restoration done to the temple so it looks to be in the natural state when they found it, starting to fall apart. Baphuon was under major restoration while we were there so we weren't allowed inside of it and all we could do was look at it from the front so it wasn't very interesting. Additionally the Terrace of Elephants wasn't very interesting as all it was was a wall with some elephant carvings on it, and a terrace at the top of the wall. Phimeanakas was a fairly decent temple although it was just like a pyramid which you could climb to the top of for some good views and there weren't any carvings or other impressive features.
From Angkor Thom we headed out to Ta Prohm making a short stop at Ta Keo on the way. Ta Keo was another large pyramid shaped temple similar to Phimeanakas and slightly more impressive; however, it didn't even compare to Angkor Wat and Bayon I thought. Ta Prohm was the temple that I had been looking forward to the most as this is the one that has jungle growth all over it (if anyone has seen Tomb Raider then this is the temple from that movie with the tree growing over the opening). The temple itslef didn't seem too impressive but it was really incredible seeing how they had just left the jungle to reclaim the area. Trees were growing out of everthing from walls to roofs to pillars. The downside to this was that everything was roped off for saftey so we weren't allowed to get very close to the ruins in most places. Finally we finished off the day with Bantaey Kdei which was a smaller temple that just happened to be on our way home, it was a very spread out temple that seemed to just keep going despite it's small appearance but other than that it wasn't too impressive.
By day 3 we were pretty worn out from looking at temple after temple so decided to take it easy and just rent bicycles and head in the direction of the Roluos group not really worrying whether we would make it all the way. We did end up cycling the 10 or km out to the temples and spent a few hours that afternoon looking at the temples Preah Ko and Bakong. The temple Preah Ko wasn't very impressive after seeing Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom yesterday so only a small amount of time was spent there; however, Bakong was a very large temple with many well preserved statues surrounding it. We spent a few hours wondering around Bakong and just relaxing at the base of it while waiting for the sunset so that we could get some good sunset pictures. This left us with an hour long bicycle ride back in the growing darkness, which in hindsight may not have been the wisest choice. As we were riding back we came upon the scene of an accident where a motorcycle rider had collided with a bicycle and the motorcycle rider was lying on the road severly wounded. Trying to communicate with the crowd of local people that had collected at the accident site proved to be impossible and we were very relieved when an ambulance eventually showed up. The part that shocked us most was that people didn't seem to know what to do: the one person who spoke english explained to us what happened but she wouldn't help any and she didn't even know the phone number for the ambulance to get help. Goes to show how little people in these countries are educated if they don't even learn how to call for emergency services.
After the indcident on the highway the rest of the ride back to town was uneventful (thankfully) and that night was spent relaxing after that experience. The following day I got up and caught a bus for Phenom Penh.
Some of the beautiful carvings at Bantaey Srey,
Standing in front of some the carvings at Bantaey Srey.
Standing in Bantaey Samre.
The famous Angkor Wat, unfortunately you can see the scaffolding being used for restoration around the "towers".
The many faces from the Bayon temple.
Some local Cambodians who were walking around and preying at the top of Ta Keo.
The trees taking over Ta Prohm, you can see the famous image from the movie Tomb Raider and myself standing in the roots of one of them (the only one we were able to get close to).
The Roluos group temple Bakong.
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