Guns and Frocks

Loving Delta and the Bannermen since 1987

God mode

Monday 1 January 2018

A close up of Angkor Wat's highest tower, covered in balconies and intricate carvings, silhouetted against a bright blue sky.

I met Calvin in Siem Reap on 27 December.

It had taken me two days to get there from Athens. A flight from Athens to Dubai, which was delayed a couple of hours due to fog in Dubai; a night spent in the First Class Lounge in Dubai, since it was too late to get to my hotel; a flight from Dubai to Bangkok; a night in the Novotel at Bangkok Airport; and then a short flight from Bangkok to Siem Reap.

Calvin is clearly much better at this holiday thing than I am. He used points to arrange our first class flights, and he used points to book us into the Sofitel Angkor Phokeethra Golf and Spa Resort at Siem Reap. It’s a massive hotel, with a spa but no golf course, built in a sort of French colonial style. The staff say bonjour to you as you walk past, even quite late in the day.

A walkway across the water between the dining room and a pagoda. The trees are festooned with lights

I met Calvin at the hotel, dropped off my luggage and immediately went on an informal tour of the city. Calvin had arranged it the day before with a tuk tuk driver he met at a temple he was visiting. We spent a few hours careening around the city, had lunch, and took a boat ride up the river Tonlé Sap to a floating village on the edge of a massive freshwater lake. For dinner, Calvin had made a reservation at a famous restaurant called Haven, which is normally booked up months in advance.

For the next two days, Calvin had booked a tour of the temples around the city. We visited nearly half a dozen on the first day, beautiful ruined temples, surrounded and covered by forest, massive and complex, covered in sandstone carvings. On the second day, we spent the morning at Angkor Wat, arriving before 5 AM and watching the sun rise behind the temple, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of other tourists.

  • The massive stone temple of Angkor Wat silhouetted against the sunrise and reflected in a vast pool of water in front of it. At the bottom of the photo are the heads of tourists looking at the sight.
  • A massive packed crowd of tourists looking over to the left at Angkor Wat, which is out of frame. Some are holding cameras. There's a palm tree in the background.
  • A packed crowd standing around the corner of the lake, with trees and tents in the background. Some are looking at their phones, others are looking at the temple, which is out of frame.
  • We're on the edge of the crowd which is standing around a lake. In the distance the crowd is packed. There are trees behind them.
  • A corner of Angkor Wat, with its carved balconies in shadow. Behind them the tower is lit yellow by the early morning sunlight.
  • We are looking up at one of the towers of Angkor Wat. It is bathed in sunlight; below it the intricately carved walls are in shadow.
  • A tower at Angkor Wat. It is covered in complex carvings and at the bottom are square columns and doorways arrange in a strange and complicated pattern.
  • Looking along the wall of some kind of quadrangle. A pillared balcony juts out from the wall. The walls are covered with spiral pillars, and everything is stained white.
  • Looking out at a courtyard in Angkor Wat. The wall facing us has a door flanked with pillars. There are tourists milling round. More sandstone structures are visible in the distance.
  • A shot of Angkor Wat. There are several towers covered in ornate carvings, and below them are doorways and pillars and colonnades carved into the stone.

For me, 2017 was the year of visiting temples — in Sicily, mainland Italy and Greece — and I saw a fair number of temples in Japan in 2016 as well. Angkor Wat is the most impressive temple I have ever seen. Not just the size and scale, but the intricacy of the carvings, on nearly every available surface.

We’re in Luang Prabang now. Calvin booked us a room in the Hôtel Sofitel Luang Prabang, a small resort hotel with only 24 rooms, which was the governor’s residence a hundred years ago, then government offices, and finally, a prison. The swimming pool was probably installed after that.

The front of a hotel. Wide stairs lead up to a pillared verandah. Each pillar is festooned with a coloured lamp. Above the awning, the walls are made of dark wood.

Luang Prabang is much smaller than Siem Reap — 55,000 people. It’s touristy as well, but more in a hippy backpacker sort of way. That’s slightly irritating, in so far as the streets are full of dreadlocked and tattooed young people wearing silk drawstring pants decorated with elephants. But it’s quiet and relaxing. The food is good, both in the restaurants and at the side of the road. And there are fun things to do, but not so many fun things that we’ll be running around non-stop until we leave on Friday.

Calvin organised a tour on our first day: a boat trip to visit a cave containing a thousand Buddha images, and a bus trip to a bear sanctuary and a waterfall. Today, New Year’s Day, we visited as many temples as we could possibly find, and went to the night market to watch young people buying silk drawstring pants. Tomorrow, we’ll be meeting some elephants. Calvin organised it.