01 / Siem Reap and Angkor
Siem Reap & Angkor
We gave Angkor several days, enough to see much more than Angkor Wat. I had wanted to visit for 30 years, and it became one of the highlights of the trip; we could have spent several more weeks exploring. We also visited Ta Prohm, where tree roots wrap through the stone, along with the faces, gates and long carved galleries of the larger temple complex. Starting early helped with the heat. We were surprised by how few tourists we saw—sometimes we had a temple almost to ourselves. The border dispute with Thailand had clearly hurt tourism in Cambodia that season.