I will have to switch the alarm on my wristwatch off. I am so used to the sound that it never manages to wake me up. It happened again this morning when I wanted to get up at 4:30AM to see the sunrise at Angor Wat at around 5:23AM. Fortunately I woke up by myself only half an hour later and even though I wasn’t feeling well and really had to push myself hard to start moving I managed to see the sunrise at Angor.

I was getting upset at myself as I was moving too slow though and wasting precious minutes even after I actually got up from the bed. The fact that it was cloudy at the eastern horizon “saved me” though as I did get there about 10 minutes after sunrise. The clouds however moved the horizon up for me today. In fact the sun didn’t show itself until after another hour later. Fortunately the rays that got through the holes in the clouds and colored the horizon with range of yellow, orange and blue were enough to make the effort of getting up so early in the morning worthwhile.

After yesterday’s experience when I was in Angor on my own bike against the stupid rule where no foreigner is allowed to drive there himself and effectively has to hire a pushbike or a motorbike with a local driver, I sneaked around the entry gates on my own bike again.

My stomach problems were with me again since when I woke up so after seeing the sunrise , climbing and descending all the steep flights of stairs of Angor Wat’s several levels and quickly riding around the circuit of  “small tour” through some of the other temples of Angor I had to return to my guesthouse to spend couple of hours sitting on a toilet bowl. Before I went back I pushed myself to eat something (as there was neither time nor mood for it in the morning), took some of the herbal medicine I got for the runs and stomachache from the guy in Chiang Mai in Thailand (since Immodine obviously doesn’t work at all in Asia ;-) )  and topped it with a few grams of vitamin C. Fortunately this seemed to have stopped the runs and mostly even the bellyache for the rest of the day.

On my way back to Angor I have bypassed the entry gates again. This time, however, I could hear a whistle as one of the security guards of tourist police were trying to stop me. I didn’t turn my head the tiniest bit and continued riding. The person who blew the whistle obviously didn’t have any motorized transport available to catch me. Unfortunately, only a couple of kilometers further I ran into a couple of tourist police officers going in the opposite direction in their car. Because it was exactly these two that I originally asked for the permission to drive within Angor area yesterday and they firmly refused with reference to some letter from the government, they could now easily recognize my bike form a distance. They could actually had been tipped by the whistling security guard from the gate. So a couple of hundred meters before we would have passed each other they flashed their headlights at me madly, stopped and the higher ranking officer ran out of the car to wave me to the side of the road. What they wanted to know was of course how come I was driving there when they told me clearly yesterday that it was not allowed. I told them that I was let in by the lady at the gate (which was true) “forgetting” to mention the second part she said to me. He phoned to someone and then asked me who did I listen to - a lady at the gate or the police. This question didn’t need an answer of course. So he sent me back with the words that he was not going to fine me THIS TIME although he could.

As I was riding back I had a huge dilemma as to whether I should disobey the order or not. The problem was that it was already 11 o’clock and to ride back to my guesthouse, find a proper mountain bike to rent and then still try to see all the temples and cities of Angor was probably not possible to do in the time that was left out of the day. Hiring a motorbike with a driver was still not an acceptable solution for me. Before I reached the turnoff to the entry gates I made my first decision. I was going to check out a couple of temples on the other side of Angor precinct and cut the visit to Angor short after that.

I wasn’t sure whether the police would expect me to disobey their order and would therefore possibly be going in the opposite direction on the small tour circle so I was riding very cautiously, looking out for a police car or a motorbike. This was quite stressful but after seeing the two temples I decided that I was going to risk the police catching me again as the possibility of that lessened if they didn’t get me by then. I was still riding around under a bit of stress and hiding my bike as much as I could whenever I stopped to do some more temple sightseeing, but now I can say that it was worth it. I saw another few beautiful old temples, some of them still overrun by the jungle, and the police didn’t catch me again. I also relaxed at some of the less visited temples – in fact I was there for an hour and nobody else came during that time – and met some interesting people. Few of them were Dutch again and I spent an hour at the top of one of the biggest temples with a couple of Americans of roughly my age. One of them actually lives in Thailand and starting up a business and a family on Samui Island. It was another nice relaxing time of the day there with them, discussing several different topics and having few laughs.

Sunset was going to be cut short again by the clouds on the western horizon this time so I went to take a few photographs of Bayon – one of the most interesting temples – before returning back to Angor Wat to take a few pictures of it lit from the better side. Before the sun hid itself behind the clouds I had a few opportunities to take some very nice pictures of it.

It was a very nice day at the end – the sun was shining, the tourist police didn’t catch me again and my belly gave me some space for the rest of the day after the not so great morning.

Here is a few suggestions based on my personal experience in Angor:

• Most people seem to buy the three day pass to Angor for USD40. If you are not sure about spending either that much time or money in Angor then I can say to you that even 1 day is probably enough. In that time I saw everything (except the 13 and 33km distant temples) and all in a very comfortable pace. However, if you are a temple or history lover and haven’t seen too many temples lately, you might need the three days (or even a week) to see and enjoy Angor thoroughly.
  
• As I mentioned earlier, if you buy the ticket to Angor one day before you will be allowed in to see the sunset that day. They will let you in after 5PM (not 4 as is in the brochures).
  
• If you want to ride your own motorcycle in Angor then I suggest you do the following:
  o Don’t bring the bike with you to the ticketing booth when buying the ticket. That way you will not give them the chance to tell you about the regulation that you can’t drive it inside Angor area.
  o In no case go to the tourist police to ask for the permission to drive in Angor even if the people at the ticketing booths tell you that you can try. Your request WILL be refused and you only let the tourist police know about you and you show them your bike. If you don’t make this mistake I made then you can safely tell them that you didn’t know in case they catch you and even after that you still have one reasonably safe go before they catch you for the second time.
  
• If you do drive yourself in Angor don’t be afraid of the police. They are all around but they didn’t care about me at all. It is only the tourist police that might stop you but even from among these guys it only seemed to be of any concern to only the two tourist policemen I talked to the day before. Based on that fact and the fact that I caught the policeman saying some controversial things to me I even suspect that all this “foreign driver” bullshit is just some kind of a money making scheme where maybe the hired drivers give a percentage of the hire fee to the tourist police guys. This is a pure speculation of mine though.
  
• Lastly, if you want to have a reasonable chance to see sunrise and sunset in Angor then don’t go there in the beginning of the rainy season as I did ;-).

To avoid the two tourist police guys but also to see something new again I didn’t exit using the main access road. Rather I took a side road that according to my GPS should eventually lead me back to Siem Riep. There was no reasonably major road where my GPS was saying there should be so I took a narrow dirt road at the suggested coordinates. First I was riding through a very pretty landscape of low shrubby bush. Then the road divided into two narrow paths. I asked a girl passing on a pushbike which one to take to Siem Riep and continued in the direction she pointed. It was dark by that time. After conquering this sandy and at places muddy mini road I arrived back to almost the same place where I turned off for this exploration detour. That meant that I still had to go past the gates to Angor. It was completely dark and nobody was going to be there anymore anyway… The tourist police building is just next to the ticket booths and there were in fact still some people there in front of it when I passed, but I only had to laugh as to how well had the risk that I had taken paid off again.

I just remembered another little episode that happened to me in the morning in Angor. My intestines were telling me that I needed to go to the toilet again so I asked the guards preventing me and all the other visitors to enter Angor Wat before 6AM where was one. When I found it a little, about 11 years old “usher” appeared and “presented me” to one of the toilets only 10 meters away. Before he let me in though he requested a fee of 2000 Riels, which is 50 US cents. When I refused with the reply that after paying USD20 for entry I was pretty sure that the toilets were free he pointed at a number painted on the inside of the toilet door. When I pointed out that the number was saying 1000 he simply repeated his request for 2000 Riels again. My belly was saying me to go with ever higher urgency so I stopped debating with him and simply entered the little room and locked myself there.
Those little con-men don’t even give you a piece of toilet paper to support their request for money. They are pretty thorough in their demand though so watch out and don’t be fooled by them.
As I was squatting over the squat toilet I heard another little guy “training” this older one to be even tougher than he already was (and I have to give him that he really was for a 10 or 11 year old). When I left the toilet this even younger kid, being not older then 8 or 9, blocked my way and demanded his fee: “No money, no toilet! No money, no toilet! 2000 Riel!”. So I gave him a talk about how I was not going to pay just anybody who approaches me and has no prove that he really is who he claims to be and that I was happy to pay if they brought an uniformed guard that would confirm that I was really supposed to pay. “OK?” I asked. “OK” was the answer and the little highwayman dropped his demands, turned away with a guilty face and let me be.
So watch out for such cons in Angor as well. ;-)

(80km)