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The historical city of Siem Reap is a charming Cambodian city in its own right; however it’s best known as gateway to Angkor Wat. With a relatively compact city centre, it’s easy to walk around and explore the different sights. Providing a glimpse of everyday Cambodian life, in amongst the luxury hotels and backpacker palaces, you’ll find rustic Khmer villages and bustling market places while the surrounding jungle, grasslands and rice-fields offer a spectacular display of Cambodian landscape.
Visit the many bars and restaurants on Pub Street or sample all kinds of creepy crawlies from various street stalls, selling everything from deep fried tarantula to roasted snake on a skewer and seasoned crickets. Grab some traditional hand-made souvenirs at the night market in the touristy Old Market area or visit the Khmer Art of Carving Centre where you can see some of these goods being carved out of wood and stone by the artisans.
Angkor Wat is a masterpiece and the country’s National Treasure. Work began on the World Heritage Site in the 9th century and continued on and off for the next 600 or so years, with the last temple being built in the late 15th century. With their unrivaled beauty and majesty, nothing can quite prepare you for how truly spectacular all the temples in the vast complex really are. Start early with sunrise over the most famous temple - Angkor Wat. As they sun lights up the sky, the detailed structure appears before your eyes and in the reflection of the pool of water in front of it.
A tour is highly recommended, to ensure you see the majority of the best-preserved temples and learn about when and for whom they were built. There are thousands of shrines, statues and beautiful stone-carvings, all stunning remains of the mighty Khmer empire. The complex was abandoned by the Khmer kings in the 15th century and was only rediscovered in 1864 by a French naturalist. Buddhist monks still use the temples today and can be seen wondering around the various sites.
Other familiar temples in the complex include Ta Prohm, used in the film Tomb Raider. Mysterious and eerily beautiful with large tree roots creeping across and through the ruins, there has been some restoration work on it though it remains vastly untouched. Angkor Thom was the last capital of the Khmer empire and is best known for the grand Bayon Temple, with its many hand-carved, serenely enigmatic smiling faces.