After a whole day of temple exploring and wandering, it was already late afternoon. Our driver had exhausted his list of temples for us to visit. Most of the temple we visited were the further ones like Banteay Samre and Banteay Srei. So we were all tired. Our driver asked us where we wanted to go. For lack of better ideas, we thought of going to Phnom Bakheng to see the sunset.
Upon hearing this, our driver strongly advised us not to go there. “Very many people.” I guess it would be quite crowded at the top since it is a popular spot, but we insisted since I’m also interested to see the sunset from the top. Phnom Bakheng is a temple built on top of a small hill.
By the time we got to the base of the hill there were already quite a lot of people milling about. Most of them were tourists waiting to go up the hill. There are two ways of going up to Phnom Bakheng: the easy way is to take the elephant ride at the foot of the hill and the second is to slog it all the way up the hill yourself. I didn’t really like the idea of riding the elephant to the hill but it seems that it was a pretty popular way to go up. The queue to ride the elephant was quite long but the tourists did not seem to mind.
So we went the cheap way up, by foot. It took us around 20 minutes to get to the top. The slope was very mild and the path was not paved, but rather just a foot path trodden by countless tourists. There were also a lot of cheapskate tourists who didn’t want to go up by elephant so we had plenty of company.
At the top was the Phnom Bakheng itself. Phnom Bakheng used to serve as the capital of an ancient city. Now it is nothing more than a viewing deck for tourists. Honestly, I couldn’t really explore this temple that much since I was too busy jostling for position. The temple itself is already filled with tourists from all over the world. All of them waiting for the sun to set.
Once I got a good spot on one of the highest points of the temple, we waited. Be warned that it is not allowed to stand on the walls of the temple. Just when you think you have a good spot, you’ll be asked to come down. From our spot, I have a great view of the Angkor Wat. The setting sun casting a nice orange glow to the magnificent temple. My camera doesn’t have a powerful zoom so I was reduced to using the digital zoom to get a better view of Angkor Wat.
My spot was good enough to avoid having to take a picture of someone else’s head. As I was waiting for the sun to set, I discovered that the wall I was leaning against had some crawling insects – the type I’ve never seen before. I quickly brushed them off and made sure that none of them got inside my clothes.
The sun sets opposite the entrance of Angkor Wat, which is directly behind us, this helped distribute the tourists a little bit. Some would look at Angkor Wat on one side, another group would be looking at the sun set. We happened to chance on some Buddhist monks touring the place and got a few snaps of them.
After the sun set, it was quickly getting dark and everyone started making their way down the hill. The path is not lighted but with enough people it should not be difficult to follow the path. We quickly found our driver and made our way back to town.
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