We take our leave of Tai for the final time when he drops us at HCMC airport for our morning flight back to Cambodia, arriving into Siem Reap at lunchtime. After purchasing our entry visas once more in another bureaucratic queue of a dozen officials taking it in turns to check, double-check, stamp, process and count dollars and passports, we wander into the arrivals hall and are met by a super cool dude called Khun Burnak, our guide for the next few days.

As he and our driver transfer us to our hotel, Nak – as he tells us to call him – explains that twenty years ago the old city of Siem Reap had just 11,000 people, but since Cambodia opened up to tourists its population is now over one million people due to the huge swathes of hotels, bars, shops and restaurants that have been built. And our hotel, the Sokha Angkor Resort, is one of the best apparently.

It certainly has one of the most impressive pools we’ve ever seen, with a huge faux-temple waterfall at one end, and we spend the afternoon swimming and chilling out. With three nights in Siem Reap, and a 4.30am start in the morning, we have dinner in the hotel restaurant followed by an early night, rather than hit the town.

Blearey-eyed but excited, we’re in the car with Jip and Nak the next morning before 5am, driving to the control point for the Angkor Wat complex in darkness, the car’s headlights picking out people in tuk tuks and on bikes all heading the same way. Akin to applying for a passport, our photos are taken and our entry cards produced, before we hop back in the car and drive to the main entrance.

Above the check-in counter is a running tally of visitors for 2020. Between January 1st, and today – the 16th – 160,000 foreign visitors have bought tickets. It’s a carefully controlled system with only 10,000 permits allowed per day, but fortunately the site is so vast that despite the huge amount of visitors, it’s possible to visit temples completely alone, especially when you have a private guide like Nak who knows all of Angkor’s secrets.

He takes us first to the huge moat in front of Angkor Wat’s most famous temple, where we sit at the water’s edge, our eyes acclimatising to the pitch black night. We’re amongst the first to be here and it feels like quite a long wait until around 6am the dawn light starts to slowly illuminate the silhouette before us. Quiet music drifts towards us as crowds start to gather, and within twenty minutes the surface of the moat is alive with insects, frogs and dragonflies rippling across the water.

Many people head straight into the temple to watch the sunrise but Nak keeps us outside for a while longer as the red orb starts its ascent above the outer walls of the temple, assuring us that we will not miss any of the magical moments inside. And he’s right, for as we enter the complex down a huge walkway and through the ornate gates, there are thousands of tourists crowded around the lake all now starting to disperse having seen the first reflections of the sun in the waters.

We walk to the lake’s perimeter, having avoided the earlier jostling for a spot in the dark, and are rewarded with a glorious view of the sun above the temple towers, reflecting in the lake with just a few dozen tourists milling around as all the coach parties head back to their hotels for breakfast, returning to tour the wider grounds later in the day.

Nak takes a different approach, leading us further into the complex, and we spend the next two hours exploring this huge main Hindu temple with far fewer people than expected. As we wander around we gaze upon the incredible friezes and inscriptions, the grand courtyards and atriums, pools and towers all bathed in wonderful morning light.

We learn from Nak that Siem Reap means “Fall of the Siamese”, as it was at this place that the Khmer king Suryavarman II drove Thai invaders from the country. He built the vast temple complex of Angkor Wat, the largest religious site in the world comprising as much stone as the grand pyramid in Giza, in honour of the victory and as his funerary shrine. It’s inspired by 12th Century Hinduism, took thirty years to build and is unique in all the temples of Angkor as it faces west.

Drought eventually caused the royal family to move the capital to Pnomh Penh and despite being continuously occupied by Buddhist monks, the temples were essentially lost to the jungle until French colonialists re-discovered them in the late 1800s, taking most of their treasures back to Paris and removing many of the beautiful Buddha heads from statues in the process. 

We come to the central building and without any queues to battle with, climb high up ladders and steps to the very top where we are afforded fabulous views in all directions. It really is a bucket-list moment!

Having ticked off the biggest site of all before it is over-run we head back to the hotel at 9am for a quick breakfast, and then drive to the South Gate of Angkor Thom, the fortified imperial city built by Jayavarman VII, the last Khmer king, whose bridge across the river is lined with incredible carved heads of the gods of good and evil. At its height nearly 1 million people lived within its walls, the same as are now sprawled in the modern city outside.

Next stop is the famous Bayon Temple, with huge faces carved from stone and bas reliefs that tell stories of both grand battles and daily life, and then on to the incredible Baphoun Temple, with its raised walkways over water along which young monks walk. We climb up over the top of the pyramid structure, exploring the interior and getting seduced by the paintings of a local artist who sits inside, buying a beautiful ink and watercolour drawing of a monk at Angkor Wat.

At the back of the Baphoun temple, built into its very rock, is a huge relief of a reclining Buddha which only becomes visible at a certain angle, the architectural structure a marvel to rival that of the work of the Incas; vast stone blocks placed together piece by piece without any cement or mortar to hold them in place.

We walk on past the Phimeanakas pyramid and its neighbouring giant royal swimming pools, finishing our morning adventure visiting the Terrace of the Elephants, a platform from which King Jayavarman surveyed his army, and the engraved Terrace of Leper Kings, which includes a statue depicting Yana, the Hindu god of death.

Nak walks us to an exit where Jip is waiting to drive us to a lovely restaurant called Sala Russey by a lake, before we’re dropped at the hotel for a few hours relaxing by the pool after our early start.

It’s late afternoon when we’re collected once more to visit one of the most iconic spots in the whole of Angkor – the Ta Phrom temple. Nature has weaved its way through the crumbling ruins, with huge tree roots snaking through the temple walls, and as we wander around in the increasing shadows and warming light the place feels unworldly and magical.

Nak takes us on to climb the Pre Rup temple to watch the sunset, but after the peace of Ta Phrom it’s thronged with tourists, so we instead head on to a lake to watch the sun sink into the waters instead. It’s been a day of awe and wonder, a lifetime’s ambition fulfilled to explore these incredible temples, but our Angkor experience is far from over with a whole new set of ruins to visit tomorrow.