Wat Friday in Siem Reap

Angkor Wat- you may have heard of it.

After my first week of working (and a bit of gallivanting around) in Phnom Penh, last Wednesday I headed north to the city of Siem Reap, mostly for a couple of work meetings. Siem Reap is the second-largest city in Cambodia, and it's best known for its silk farms, French colonial architecture, and major bird preserve of Prek Toal located on the Tonle Sap lake just to the south. Just kidding! The one and only one reason the vast majority of tourists come is Angkor Wat, the largest temple complex (Wat means "temple" in Khmer) in the world and the center of the former Khmer Empire.

For a while I debated skipping Angkor Wat in favor of birding in some of the sites around. Thankfully, I soon came to my senses and realized that it would be extremely silly to come all the way to Siem Reap and not see one of the most fascinating architectural and archaeological sites in the world. First,  I had to find the time to get there. Initially I tried to go on Thursday in the late afternoon after I was finished with work, only to find that a) I needed to purchase an "Angkor Pass" in advance, and b) the temple closes at 5:30 PM. A bit crestfallen, I purchased my outrageously expensive Angkor Pass at the ticket office and headed back to my hotel to finish work and run some errands. 

Visiting a touristy area two years after it almost entirely shut down due to a global pandemic is an interesting and saddening experience. Siem Reap is chock full of enormous, fancy hotels, half of which are now boarded up and the other half of which are operating at a tiny fraction of their full capacity (I was one of maybe 5 guests in the 300-room hotel I was staying in).  Everyone I talked to- laundry people, tuk-tuk drivers, street stall vendors, birding guides- is coming off of two years of virtually no income, coping by moving back to the countryside, living off savings, or selling their equipment. There's a critique of tourism that's popular among my political circles that centers around the negative effects it can have on local communities (land grabbing, environmental damage, commodification of culture, etc.). I'm sympathetic, but actually talking with people provides a good reminder that these are real lives and livelihoods we're talking about here.

Street scene in Siem Reap

One of those people was Narin, a tuk-tuk driver I happened to fortuitously meet on Thursday night in Siem Reap when I was searching for a place to do my laundry. Narin turned out to be a great guy who knew his way all around the city, spoke excellent English, and was full of helpful tips of places to go and good conversation. He was also coming off of two years of unemployment and living off savings, and eager to have a livelihood again. I ended up hiring him to take me to Angkor Wat the next morning. 

Narin picked me up at 5 in the morning on Friday, and we headed to Angkor Wat so I could catch the sunrise over the temples. As it turns out that's the most popular time of day visit the temple, both because it has a great sunrise view and because it's the one part of the day that's just normal hot instead of extremely hot. There was, of course, a group of guides waiting like vultures at the entrance to the temple complex to snag tourists to show around. Normally this is the sort of thing I would pass up since I prefer to go at my own pace, but I figured it would be a good thing to do to learn more about the history of the spot and also do my small part to aid the economic recovery. My guide (whose name I didn't catch) did indeed know a lot about the temple complex and I'll admit that I probably learned much more than I would have without him.

The sunrise itself unfortunately wasn't great so I wasn't able to get one of those typical rising-sun-over-Angkor-Wat pictures, but nonetheless it was a great time to be there. In general I don't think I could have picked a better time to be at Angkor Wat- the tourist industry is just re-establishing itself these past few weeks so the infrastructure is mostly in place again, but there were only perhaps 100 other tourists around that morning, rather than the usual thousands that would be there in peak season.

Entrance to Angkor Wat

A courtyard inside the main temple

The eastern gate of the wat complex

Angkor Wat is arranged in a quincunx formation, with four towers making a cross shape and a fifth tower rising above them in the center of it. I was able to climb the extremely steep stairway up the top of the uppermost tower and get a bird's-eye view of the temple complex, which was breathtaking. It was also a bird's-eye view with some birds; I saw my lifer Shikra being chased around by Ashy Drongos, as well as lots of Lineated Barbets and Black-naped Orioles. But mostly I was focused on the view and the amazing architecture.

The view from the highest tower

Some perspectives of Angkor Wat

I'm somewhat of an uncultured lout when it comes to visiting historical sites (I always figure I could learn more reading the Wikipedia page), but I will say that Angkor Wat really is as good as everyone says it is. It's hard to overstate the level of detail that was put into every bit of the building- practically every surface is adorned with elaborate bas-reliefs or Khmer inscriptions, mostly depicting scenes from Hindu and Buddhist literature. I can't really give a better description than what's already online, so instead I'll just keep it to pictures.

A typical bas-relief carving

Bas-reliefs along a gallery hallway

This carving apparently shows Heaven, Earth, and Hell, complete with gods and demons

If I remember correctly this is Vishnu and his helpers churning the world ocean

Just FYI if you do this you are going to hell

After doing the circuit of the temple, I asked the guide if we could walk around the surrounding forest to look for birds. He looked at me like I had two heads ("there are no birds at Angkor Wat!"), but gamely led me on a walk through the woods anyway. Things were pretty quiet within the woods, which I'm sure made my guide feeling quite vindicated. Black Bazas were flying overhead and the Black-naped Orioles were numerous and extremely vocal. There was a flock of Ashy Minivets and my lifer Swinhoe's Minivets (although too far for good pics), and I was able to get a picture of my main target, Forest Wagtail, which is apparently fairly common at Angkor Wat but difficult in the rest of the country. I didn't see White-throated Rock Thrush or Hainan Blue Flycatcher, which are the other usual target birds, but I'd already seen them in Phnom Penh so I didn't really try hard either.

The entrance to the forest

Forest Wagtail demonstrating its excellent camouflage

Giant orbweaver spider, looking typically spooky

After some very quiet birding in the forest we exited through one of the minor gates to the moat surrounding the temple (supposed to represent the ocean around Mount Meru). Surprisingly this had much better birds than inside the forest, I guess mostly because they were easier to see out in the open. The moat held lots of tiny, adorable Cotton Pygmy Geese and both Bronze-winged and Pheasant-tailed Jacanas, none of which felt like coming close enough for pictures but were nice additions to my Cambodia bird list. Even better was a distant Black-capped Kingfisher, an uncommon and declining species it was very nice to get as a lifer. Oriental Darters also perched along the edge of the mote, overall pleasingly common here despite being almost extinct in the Philippines. There were also lots of dragonflies of various kinds, including some very cool lifers.

Black-capped Kingfisher

Oriental Darter

Bronze-winged Jacana

Scarlet Skimmer

Common Picture Wing

Charcoal-winged Percher

I believe this is a One-spot Grass Yellow although I'm not sure

Grey Pansy

There were some more good new birds near the main entrance: a few perched Red-breasted Parakeets, Blue-tailed Bee-eaters hawking flying insects, and my long-overdue lifer Indochinese Roller. I paid my guide, who I'm sure was relieved to move on to new clients instead of just following me around as I looked at birds, and decided to try the forest on the south end of the temple complex. There were a few more birds here: a nice Hair-crested Drongo, a perched Black Baza, and a brief look at a Himalayan Cuckoo. An Asian Barred Owlet was hooting from above me but I never managed to get a look at it. At the end of the trail was a group of Long-tailed Macaques, which I took as my sign to turn around and head back; I've seen enough macaques to not really want to get any closer to them, cute baby monkeys aside.

Blue-tailed Bee-eater

Red-breasted Parakeet

Indochinese Roller

Black Baza

Himalayan Cuckoo (at least I assume, as there have been no records of Oriental Cuckoo in Cambodia)

Orange Gull, one of the many butterflies given unnecessarily confusing bird names

Some kind of long-jawed orbweaver spider (Tetragnatha sp.)

Long-tailed Macaques; cute from a distance at least

Some kind of ichneumonid wasp

Asian Bloodtail, an impressive skimmer dragonfly

Common Parasol

Lime Blue

It was mid-morning by then and already swelteringly hot, and I had to return to Siem Reap for a much-needed shower and then a day of work meetings. I had a little bit of time for more exploration in the late afternoon however, so I asked Narin to take me to another temple. I'd still done very little research at this point, so I couldn't be more specific than "one with lots of trees in it". So it was that I ended up at Ta Prohm temple, of the "temples covered in tree roots" fame you've probably seen pictures of.

Narin dropped me off at the eastern side of the temple complex, which was really just a bit of scrubby forest dotted with ponds farmers were grazing their cattle in. Ta Prohm, like most Buddhist temples, is oriented to the east, which meant I had a ways to walk to get to the actual temple buildings. Wikipedia tells me that the open area on the eastern part would have once been a bustling town, but the site has been abandoned for centuries and any human habitation not made of stone has been swallowed by the forest. It was the absolute hottest part of the day, but there were still a few birds around- calling Black-naped Monarchs and Lineated Barbets, with a good look at a cooperative male Taiga Flycatcher and lots of interesting insects. 

Taiga Flycatcher

False Tiger Moth (Dysphania militaris), a very impressive moth that looks (and acts) more like a butterfly

Peacock Pansy

Purple Leaf Blue, the biggest lycaenid butterfly I've ever seen

Broad-winged Tiger Moth (Peridrome orbicularis), another impressive moth

Bronze Mabuya, a skink of the dry forests

After some walking (and a small amount of getting lost on forest paths that were probably meant more for cows than humans) I finally arrived at the temple itself, and boy is it really just as good as everyone says. The temples around Angkor are all impressive in their size and architectural complexity, and the massive gnarled trees growing over Ta Prohm make it seem both older and more timeless somehow. It's hard to do it justice with pictures, and even harder to do so with words, so suffice it to say that I really can't recommend it enough to anyone visiting Cambodia. 

The Ta Prohm temple grounds

There were birds, too, of course. Most of them were flying high above me in the treetops: noisy Common Hill Mynas, Black Bazas, Lineated Barbets, Green-eared Barbets, and the ubiquitous Red-breasted Parakeets. Asian Barred Owlet was calling again but remained frustratingly invisible. I got a surprise lifer in the form of an uncommon migrant Dark-sided Flycatcher flitting around in the branches just above me.

Red-breasted Parakeet

Common Hill Myna

Black Baza, definitely one of my favorite raptors in Cambodia

Dark-sided Flycatcher

There was a little daylight left, so Narin took me to the south gate of Angkor Thom, the former capital of the Khmer Empire. I saw my lifers White-crested Laughingthrush and Crested Treeswift along the way but unfortunately wasn't able to get pictures. The South Gate was indeed gorgeous in the late afternoon, with the sun illuminating the old stone structure and reflecting off the moat. Cotton Pygmy Geese and Little Cormorants were lounging around in the moat, and Red-breasted and Alexandrine Parakeets flew overhead. Apparently lots of other people knew this was a good sunset spot, as it was filled with Cambodian couples doing photoshoots in the colorful silks of Khmer ceremonial dress.

The Angkor Thom south gate

Sunset over the moat

Scarlet Skimmer

I asked Narin where the best spot for sunset was, which turned out to be Phnom Bakeang, just down the road. Phnom Bakeang is a small hill between Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat, and indeed a popular location for sunset, as evidenced by the dozens of people joining me on the hike up the mountain. The sun was already almost down so I had to hurry upwards, getting nice and sweaty in the process. I wasn't actually all that impressed with the view; there is an 1100-year-old Buddhist temple at the top which was cool but also covered in scaffolding from an ongoing renovation project, which blocked the view of the Angkor Wat temples that I was hoping for. I climbed to the top of the temple nonetheless and enjoyed the sunset, or what passed for one that evening. 

Sunset from the top of Phnom Bakheng

Once the sun was down I made the hike back down the mountain along with my fellow companions: locals in proper outdoor gear visiting from Phnom Penh or Siem Reap, sweaty European tourists chatting in French and German, American guys and their suspiciously young Cambodian wives, and teenage Buddhist monks in saffron-colored robes snapping pictures on their iPhones. We headed back to Siem Reap, where I picked up my laundry and tipped Narin very generously for being a good driver and good company for the day. I had enough time to finish up work and get a few hours of sleep before leaving for that weekend's birding adventure.