Travel Diary: Angkor Wat Sunrise <Siem Reap, Cambodia>

"Wanderlust", "To travel is to live", "Travel is the healthiest addiction" these are just a few quotes you will see when you search the word "travel". I always wonder what these quotes mean before because I never had a chance to travel. I always envy some people when they post travel blogs and see these beautiful places.

When I moved to Phuket, the chance to travel opened up and since then I relate to the quotes mentioned. Back in 2015, me and my friend, Katrina, decided to travel to 3 countries (Vietnam-Cambodia-Thailand) and 4 cities(Ho Chi Minh, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Bangkok) for 10 days. This is a first for both of us. We never tried travelling for this long and never went backpacking before. We started planning for about 1 month looking for cheap hotels, flights and attractions to visit. This trip was when I caught the travel bug and started the healthiest addiction there is, travelling.

For this blog post, I will be sharing only my Angkor Wat Sunrise experience because I can't compress everything in one post.

We arrived in Siem Reap late in the evening and we pre-arranged a pick-up with our hotel from the bus station (since we were coming from Phnom Penh before this). We stayed at Bou Savy Guesthouse and the hotel staffs speak english well so communication is not a problem. We asked for them to arrange a whole day trip to Angkor Wat for us the next day. The day tour usually starts at 8am but since wanted to see the sunrise, we paid a bit extra for the tour.

We woke up pretty early for the tour. Our driver was already at the hotel waiting for us at 5am. It was a very short drive from our hotel to the main entrance of the complex where we bought our ticket. We paid for a one day Angkor Wat Pass worth 20 USD. There were also other choices such as 40 USD for 3 days and 60 USD for 7 days. After paying for our tickets, we drove again towards Angkor Wat. It was still very dark at this time that we can't see a single thing except for the road that was lighted by the headlights of our ride.

Waiting for the sunrise was such an agony. There were so many people and we didn't know where we should position to get a good view. We moved from one area to the other. It was almost 6 am and still there is no sunrise. Katrina persuaded me to go closer to the towers to take some photos. It was a good way to kill some time while waiting for the sunrise. When the sun finally showed, we felt a bit disappointed at first because the clouds are somewhat covering the sun. We waited for a few minutes then we suddenly heard the crowd. You can feel the mass excitement of the people when the sun eventually came out. We went back or should I say ran towards our original spot and saw that the sun was now aligned to one of the towers. We were so lucky because the day we came was one of the three days in a year that this happens. That the sun will align to the towers.

Here are some snaps we managed to take. It was so hard to have decent photos because of the crowd.

After the exhilarating sunrise experience, we went back to meet our driver who was patiently waiting for almost 2 hours. We went back to our hotel to have breakfast and get ready for our day tour around the complex.

Angkor Wat Complex tour will be up soon. See you on my next one!