Day 333 - Visit a wat?

Rachel has a list. She keeps it in a small book she carries around with her. It's based on an article she read in a UK magazine called Wanderlust, entitled 'South East Asia Alternatives'.

The basis for the article was the suggestion that tourism has spoiled many of the traditional sights of South East Asia. It gives a number of alternatives; similar types of places which have yet to fall prey to the tourist trail and it's monstrous entourage.

For example; rather than brave the touts in Hoi Ann (Vietnam), Wanderlust suggests Kampot (Cambodia) instead. As an alternate to the French colonial splendour of Hanoi, it recommends checking out the Laos capital, Vientiane. That sort of thing.

We'd heeded the list once already, heading to Vientiane instead of Vietnam. It turned out to be good advice, so we vowed to heed again. After dropping the bike in Pakse, we headed for an area dubbed 'the most laid-back place in Asia'.

Si Phan Don - Four-Thousand Islands in English - is pretty much the last stop in southern Laos before you cross the border into Cambodia. As the name suggests, the area consists of numerous islands in the middle of the Mekong, where the river reaches up to 14km in breadth. The exact number changes depending on the season, but you get the general idea.

Si Phan Don's reputation has been well earned. As long as there is nothing more you want from life than a hammock, food, plentiful beers and an occasion wander along the shoreline, then you are in heaven.

Thing is, after four days of lazing around - and I mean doing the merest above nowt - I was bored. More toey than a nymphomaniac in a nunnery. Like the rest of Laos, Si Phan Don just wasn't living up to the hype. I wasn't feeling the love. I didn't come halfway around the world to sit by the water and do naff all. Strewth, I could go on the dole and do that in Maroubra. It was time to go.

We glanced at the list again. It mentioned Angkor Wat (one of the Seven Forgotten Wonders of the Medieval Mind, no less). It suggested Preah Vihear as an alternative. We took a moment.

Were we really going to pass up on a Wonder of the World? Hadn't we said the same thing about Iguazu? The Taj Mahal? Hadn't we ended up going anyway?

That's the thing about these places. No matter how many horror stories you hear, never mind how daunting the prospect of subjecting yourself to death by a thousand "hey lady, you want a tuk-tuk?"'s, you still end up going.

So we went. And from the off, Siem Reap, and Cambodia, really surprised me.


Maybe what I'm really writing about here is expectations. My expectations of Laos were high, fuelled by the mung-bean loving praise of the Lonely Planet. It failed to measure up. Meanwhile, Siem Reap was labelled the 'tourist mecca of the region', carrying with it all the negative connotations of that phrase.

Siem Reap is a cracking city. It was apparently quite Monaco-esque back in the 70s, drawing the jet set crowd in from around the globe. Then, the war brought an end to it all. Until, that is, now.

Modern-day Siem Reap is a buzzy, fizzy little city, contained and concentrated, but riddled with all sorts of funky little bars, restaurants, boutique clothes shops, the odd Hollywood film star and enough to keep you occupied 'til well after bedtime.

We meant to stay three nights, but ended up bedding down for five, drawn to  the pool at the wonderful Antaneue Hotel. I watched as my previously-mentioned blue veil of sadness melted on the red-hot tiles underneath my padded sun lounger. Another cocktail anyone?

Oh. Yeh. I almost forgot about the Temples of Angkor. How remiss of me.

They are impressive indeed. Angkor Wat is obviously the most famous, and the scale of it is certainly grand. However, it is only a small part of a larger complex, home to over a million souls at a time when the mighty City of London housed a population of just 50,000. I personally took far more pleasure exploring Bayon (the temple of a thousand faces, all of it's builder; surely a candidate for the Russell Brand Award for the Most Egotistical Man in the History of the World) and Ta Prohm (colloquially known as 'The Tomb Raider Temple").

The problem of course is that I'm seeing the temples of Angkor through eyes that have seen a fair share of historical sights over the past few months. I feel a bit like Tiger Woods in a strip club. Because I've seen so many beautiful things, I may not appreciate them as much as I should.

Like most of the reknowned places we've seen on this trip - Iguazu, the Grand Canyon, Tikal etc - they don't always live up to the considerable hype that accompanies them. However, there is something about them that makes you glad to have been there. Angkor is no different. And when you throw Siem Reap into the mix, you have a place that we are both very glad we chose not to miss.


All the photos from Si Phan Don and Siem Reap

Postscript: As an aside, I found out really interesting fact about how Angkor Wat was built. As they laid down brickwork, the construction teams (ie. slaves) would mound dirt atop them, to enable them to then build the upper levels.


This meant that, at the end of the whole process, they would end up excavating the temple from the ground in order to reveal it.


How cool would that look caught on time lapse camera!?