A Bucket List Experience: Exploring Angkor Wat

This week we made the pilgrimage to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to explore Angkor Wat and the many other temples within the Angkor Archaeological Park — an experience that has been on our “bucket list” for a long time.

Angkor is the largest religious structure in the world — spanning more than 400 square kilometers through the jungles of Cambodia — and also one of the most important archaeological sites on the planet. The complex is home to more than a thousand temples built between the 9th and 15th centuries, including its namesake temple Angkor Wat, and was once home to between seven hundred thousand and a million people — around the same number as ancient Rome at its height.

We spent two full days traveling from temple to temple via a private remorque — a sightly larger cousin of the tuk tuk that is ubiquitous throughout Siem Reap — and still only barely scratched the surface of this incredible place. We managed to visit most of the larger, more popular temples, as well a few that were a little more off the beaten path (one quite literally!).

One of the things that surprised us was how different each of the temples were to one another — there were massive pyramid-style temples with huge red sandstone steps climbing to the sky, temples with swirling towers shaped like lotus flowers, water temples, island temples, and jungle temples that had been reclaimed by nature and returned to rubble by the snaking roots of strangler fig trees.

The latter were our favourites, and we spent hours channeling our inner Indiana Joneses and Lara Crofts, clambering over the mossy rubble, under twisty vines, and between the massive roots to explore the secrets of these wondrous places and inspect the intricate carvings that covered nearly every inch of stonework.

It was like nothing we’ve ever done before, partially because it’s much more open than any other tourist or archaeological site we’ve visited — there are no velvet ropes or designated pathways keeping you contained, and you’re able to explore the temples in a much more interactive way.

It’s an experience we will never forget, and another core memory added to our family bank.

You can read more about the logistics of our visit here.