Visit ANGKOR WAT in CAMBODIA 2023 ������������ (What now?)

Today we will be answering the question what is it like when you visit the Angkor Wat temples in 2023? How much does it cost and which temples and for how long should you visit those temples? All of these questions plus many more will be answered in today's video. I'd also like to say that this video is brought to you by Squarespace. More about them later in the video. Visiting the Angkor Wat temples has been a bucket list item for this channel for so long and we're finally here. So let's get in our tuk-tuk with the trusty Cowboy. I don't know if you saw the last video but we had an incredible tour with Cowboy and we're using him again today because well he's such a nice guy. So yeah let's jump in the tuk-tuk with Cowboy and explore the Angkor Wat temples together. So it's worth mentioning if you didn't see he does supply cold drinks, water and beer. I think I'm going to keep off the beers today. We had enough last night and we're going to a very important religious site. So for me drinking beers and religion don't really go hand in hand. Okay and just like that 15 minutes we are here and it's lunchtime so it's very very quiet and I didn't have to queue at all and it was $37 for a ticket and you get a little picture of yourself on your ticket and you can get a free map. Okay Cowboy has dropped me off and we're going to be going to the first of probably quite a few temples today. I think it's worth mentioning straight away off the bat that Angkor Wat is only the main attraction. It's not the name of this general area. This is an entire ancient city, huge area and there are over 25 different relics and temple grounds that you can explore. Never in one day, probably not even in three but maybe for a week if you really wanted to see them all. Hello! The one thing that I sort of didn't expect was just how in the middle of the jungle it is because obviously Siem Reap is quite a big city and 15 minutes outside we're in the middle of the jungle. It's really thick stuff here like you can imagine why it was only recently discovered because this whole jungle area had recaptured and grown around not just Angkor Wat but the surrounding temples and when they stumbled across it and they started clearing it away they couldn't believe how many relics and evidence of this huge ancient civilization they found here and then quite quickly obviously it became so so famous around the world. So let's go see the first one. You know this is going to be a fun temple day when something as beautiful as this right behind me isn't even a thing on the map. This is just like oh yeah this is just some outhouse and yet it's gorgeous. The moss growing on it, the detail, even this like yeah there's figurines and statues imprinted into the wall and of course it's all fallen over now. The contrast and the colors of the rock and the jungle trees and the blue sky and the light coming through. So yeah I think we're in for some jaw-dropping scenes. In fact just over yonder we're at the first temple. This is the one from the movie Tomb Raider. I'm actually quite surprised that you're kind of just left to your own devices and you can just explore and climb over the ruins. I suppose that's the half of the fun of it isn't it but I thought a lot of it would be out of bounds, don't stand on this, don't sit on this but it does seem to be just like a big playground. This would be the ultimate place to bring children and let their imagination run wild. Oh I'm just photobombing somebody by accident. God if you had a girlfriend and she was a one of those Instagram girlfriends who forces the boyfriend to take photos and photos I think you'd be here for the rest of the day getting the just the right shot. The beauty is in the detail. Every wall, every panel, everywhere you just sort of peek your head into there's inscriptions on the walls, there's statues embedded into the architecture of the whole building itself and what's great is the way that the jungle is just amongst it all. I just bumped into a couple of Americans who have been doing a tour all day and this is one of their last ones and they said this is their favourite of the whole day so far which is good that cowboy took us here first and you can hear the birds right. Now there are tourists here, there's a big group of Indians here and you know lots of people from all over the world but it doesn't feel completely crowded which is nice. Look at the way this tree has wrapped itself around that is crazy. I think that's actually this must be the highlight of this temple because this is kind of like the photo area. I would imagine this is where people come. It's beautiful though, holy moly. I'm just trying to think like how did it grow because it's not like it came through it kind of looks like it was dropped on top and then it grew down. Hard to explain. It just keeps getting better and better. I keep laughing, I keep going through the corner and just go because this is spectacular, unbelievable. Okay I get it now, you know we've seen temples, we've seen hundreds on this channel. This one, this one. Oh funny side note, when I came into this temple they told me I had to take my microphone off my camera and I said why and they said it's not allowed so I'm not allowed to capture fantastic audio for some reason so just thought that was kind of strange. I just love the more you look, the more you look, the more you see. Like this root system that's wrapped around in a crazy way you don't realize but it's actually been supported by some scaffolding for some reason maybe because they just want to preserve this tree and maybe it was just destroying this site because there's just boulders and rocks everywhere and the artwork underneath is trying to peep through and like I said the more you look at it the more detail you see. I could stay here all day just in this temple. This is amazing, amazing. Okay that's two and a half hours at the tomb temple. It's been incredible. I'll remember this one regardless of how epic Angkor Wat turns out to be and wherever cowboy takes us next, the tomb raider temple. I don't think it can get better than this and I can see now why maybe the Americans that I met earlier said that this was their favorite of the day. The way the trees are just growing around it, the moss, I mean look at the color of the moss behind me here on the rocks. This ancient civilization, they knew how to live a good life out here in the jungle. Man this is incredible. 10 out of 10 for the tomb raider one. There's plenty of options when it comes to food so if you do want to get lunch or something to eat there's loads of restaurants. Me and cowboy have just pulled up to some place. Here he is and I have to say I'm a little bit jealous because the restaurant's upstairs okay and I had some local cuisine. It was quite nice, a little bit expensive but that's okay and but cowboy's happy days. He's just told me it's like oh if I bring customers here the drivers get free food. Yeah sure. Look at this. What's this? This is yummy. Free beef curry, rice, a coconut and all the other drivers are in here having a right old feed and I have to say I didn't film the food upstairs because I was lazy but this food looks way nicer than the food for the tourists. Oh my god and he gets it free so that's good. Good. I like this. Oh yeah that's spicy. That's good. That's like Thai food. If you like spicy food come here with a group and then when everybody goes upstairs to get the tourist food come downstairs and eat with the drivers because the food's way better. Cowboy has to go home. His kid is not very well and his wife needs the tuk-tuk because I think that's their their car to get around town but luckily he's called his friend Mr Long who's right here and Mr Long is going to continue our tour. The cold drinks are here but yeah Mr Mr Cowboy has to go take care of his kid and his wife. If you need a professional looking website for your business then I really recommend Squarespace. These are the guys that I use for my website and they offer a fantastic service. With member areas you can unlock a new revenue stream for your business and free up time in your schedule by selling access to gated content like videos, newsletters or online courses which is something that I'm about to launch on my website very soon. Head over to squarespace.com to start your free trial and to create your site and when you're ready to purchase the domain head over to squarespace.com forward slash paddy doyle to get 10% off. Okay this is the second stop of the day the Banyan Temple. This one's famous because of the faces on the actual towers themselves. There's probably a dozen of them maybe more and each one has a face on each side and so just looking at it from here it's already stunningly beautiful and I'll give you some factual information as a voiceover because there's a lot to unpack in this one. So the Banyan Temple was one of the last ones to be built and the faces themselves actually depict the king at the time King Jayavarman VII. You can tell just by the statue outside and the faces on the temple that he seemed like a nice guy. He's got a lovely little smile and all over the temple on the walls and on the panels you can see imagery and stories being told to show you what life must have been like here in Cambodia almost a thousand years ago. This temple was gorgeous but don't allocate too much time to this one maybe half an hour at most. It's quite small, you can walk around quite quickly and even though it's stunningly beautiful you certainly want to spend more time at Angkor Wat and at the previous temple from the Tomb Raider movies for sure. I like how you can just climb and go inside them. It's nice to escape from the sun You feel like the real Tomb Raider when you come inside. You can see one of the faces here they have this kind of almost stoned zen like face. A very smirk, gratifying grin as they just ponder here for thousands of years. Maybe not thousands of years but nearly a thousand years. Oh bats, oh this is so much fun. Oh I love it when you get back outside and you can see again the faces. One on each tower on each side so four faces per tower. It's beautiful it's really really something. It's completely different as well to the Tomb Raider one because this has like got a lack of forest and trees. This one must have been a much more focalised site of religion and ceremony whereas before it felt like that was a town, like the town centre. There's just so many buildings. Cambodia this is special. You guys are so so lucky to have this in your country. Pretty incredible. The whole of this wall telling a story of the local life. Absolutely insane. Look at the detail. This person looks like they're making sticky rice and she's dancing, selling goods, having a pint down the pub. I'm not quite sure about all of it Wow look at that view. Stunning, absolutely stunning, no other words. Okay I think now we'll go back to meet Mr Long and we'll head on to Angkor Wat itself, the big one. Wow so epic. Okay we made it to the entrance. Oh it's beautiful and it's hot. Okay into the Angkor Wat we go and it looks like a beautiful statue as you come in. Oh eight arms, I've never seen that before. This is the end of the line. We are now inside the courtyard in Angkor Wat itself. It's massive, it's massive. So impressive, so beautiful and just I thought this place would actually be completely overrun because there's thousands of people here but most people seem to give up halfway here and just take pictures outside. There's a few people up in there but I'll save the big view for the final of the episode, finale I should say. This is gorgeous, gotta come here, gotta come here. Okay 15 minutes later and it was 15 minutes later, we're here and it's actually quite a nice surprise. It's actually a temple on the top and hopefully we'll have a lovely view so let's go. I've just checked 13,900 steps today so your temple day in Angkor Wat is gonna burn some of those calories off which is good to know. I'm gonna whisper and keep my voice down because it's a bit of a letdown up here for three reasons. The first is I thought we'd be able to see Angkor Wat and we kind of can from one angle if you squint your eyes and zoom in and it looks beautiful but we'd have a very interrupted view but that's okay. We come over to the sunset side and there's a giant crane blocking the view and then there's hundreds of people up here but actually I like the fact we're all up here. The chitter chatter, the quiet respectful conversations you can hear, that's the nicest part because the view's not that great. I kind of wish we went somewhere else for sunset but you live and you learn, let's just enjoy it.