Angkor and Angkor Wat

Written By Ariel Mitnick

A thriving city from roughly the 9th through the 15th century, Angkor is absolutely enormous. Today, the former city is preserved as Angkor Archaeological Park, and its most famous temple is Angkor Wat.

Guided or Self-Tours

A guided tour is all but a must for Angkor Wat. There are many types of tours, including van tours, bike tours, and walking-only tours (which presumably only visit one temple - the park is just too big to walk between even the greatest hits!). Trust me: you want a van tour. There is still a lot of walking around each individual temple; Angkor Wat is the largest religious structure in the world! But between temples, you’ll get to relax in an air conditioned van. And in 95F heat and 100% humidity, you will be really grateful for those van rides between sites.

We had a wonderful experience on the Angkor Wat with Sunrise Tour with Journey Cambodia which was $26/person, not including the park entrance fee, lunch, or tips for your guide and driver. Our tour guides were wonderful - they spoke great English, gave us a comprehensive and engrossing picture of the history of Angkor and each of the temples we visited, told us various Buddhist and Hindu myths that are depicted in wall carvings that we’d never have been able to interpret otherwise, and led us to tasty lunch.

Sunrise at Angkor Wat

Ian and I are late risers. Really late risers. We didn’t get up to witness the sunrise over the Torres of Torres del Paine in Chile, and we never get up early enough to do anything before work, let alone for sunrise. But the Angkor Wat sunrise is WORTH IT. Here are a few reasons why.

  1. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here you go! Yes, the image is edited, but I really edited it to look like what we actually witnessed that day, rather than what my measly iPhone could pick up.

2. In the early morning, you’ll get less extreme heat, and that’s worth at lot. Your tour will also end by around 1pm, so you’ll avoid being out in the worst heat of the day.

3. If you time your visit right, you might not even be tired waking up at 4am for your tour! It’s ~11 hours off the US east coast, so if you do this close to the beginning of your trip, it might be around 3pm in your brain, and you’ll be raring to go!

Visit Duration

We only spent 3 full days in Cambodia, and we wished we'd had more time. I would have loved to have at least 2 days exploring the temples, and we only had 1. I'd recommend planning for 2 or 3 days in the Ankgor Wat Archaeological Park, one day visiting the floating village of Kompong Khleang, and optionally another day around Siem Riep.

Park Entrance Fees

  • 1-day pass - $37

  • 3-day pass - $62

  • 7-day pass - $72

The Most Fun Fact I Have Ever Learned on Any Tour, Ever

So, Angkor changed hands between Hindus and Buddhists a lot. Buddhists built these beautiful giant stone carvings of the head of the Buddha. And the Hindus came in and, not believing in the Buddha, thought they’d replace them with a more appropriate religious symbol:

A penis.

No, I am not making this up. There are penises (lingas) ALL over Angkor. People would even come to the penis statues and pour milk or honey over them as offerings. The Hindus actually installed 1,000 penis statues in a river nearby, because in the Hindu religion, water that flows over 1,000 penises is holy.

Behold, a penis.

And thus, Hinduism became my favorite religion.


Ariel Mitnick