FROM PHUKET FOR THE MYTHICAL ANGKOR WAT – 3/4 DAYS TOUR

If you are in Phuket, WITH THE NEW DIRECT FLOW PHUKET -SIEM REAP, you have now a great opportunity to visit the largest religious monument in the world, Angkor Wat, an incredible monumental complex.

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FIRST DAY

A private taxi driver will pick you up around 4.00 am from your hotel, the flight to Siem Reap is at 6.20am.

Arrival in Siem Reap at 7.45 am, you will have to do the visa, in this regard bring two card photos and 1500 thb in cash or 30 dollars for your comfort. At the airport exit you will be greeted by the professional Italian speaking guide and the driver with air conditioning.

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The arrival at the small airport of Siem Reap

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9.00 Check in at the hotel

Visit Tonle Sap Lake go to Kampong Phluk, you will cross the extraordinary and authentic village on stilts where you can observe the local life and the ancient traditions of fish processing.

You will also go to see the “submerged forest”, a very suggestive area, a real forest flooded by a meter or more of water.
Afterwards, always on the boat you will continue to navigate until the canal will merge into the Tonle Sap Lake and you will find yourself on the open sea, so much is the extension of this lake, in fact, it will look like a sea, the Tonle Sap Lake represents an efficient natural compensation basin for the Mekong, the great river, as it is able to contain the enormous increase in water due to the monsoon rains and the imposing reach of the Mekong during the season of melting glaciers in Tibet.

In this period of the year the basin extends from 3,000 to about 10,000 square kilometers, and the water level increases by 3 meters. This exceptional phenomenon means that when the water level of the lake decreases at the end of the rainy season, the previously flooded soils are now rich in silt and therefore extraordinarily fertile, thus giving huge benefits to local agriculture.

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Free evening in Siem Reap

Ask our driver to take you to the center in the evening or, even more interestingly, to take you to dinner in a typical Cambodian place … with a few dollars he will make you from Cicero and you will also have the company of a good person.

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Day 2

08:30 In the morning we will get the pass for the visit to the Angkor Wat complex

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is the most famous temple inside the religious archaeological site of Angkor and it is also the largest temple in the world ever built, its name means “temple of the city”. Originally built as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu, it was transformed into a Buddhist temple in the 14th century, and so Buddha was added later. Its construction is dated 1113-1150. The central tower is surrounded by four smaller towers and a series of fences, a layout that recreates the image of Mount Meru, a legendary place in Hindu mythology that is said to be beyond of the Himalayas and be the home of the gods. This incredible religious site is an excellent example of Khmer architecture, UNESCO has established a wide-ranging program to protect this symbolic site and its surroundings and Angkor Wat is also the best preserved of the area

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TA PROHM (TOMB RAIDER)

The trees that grow out of the ruins are perhaps the most distinctive feature of Ta Prohm and “have driven more writers to a descriptive excess of any other characteristic of Angkor”. Two species predominate, but the sources do not agree on their identification: the largest is the cotton-silk tree (Ceiba pentandra) or Thitpok Tetrameles nudiflora, and the smallest is the strangler fig (Ficus gibbosa) or apple golden (Diospyros decandra). Maurice Glaize, a scholar of Angkor, observed: “From all sides, in fantastic dark shadows, the trunks of cotton trees soar to the sky under a green and shady canopy, the long skirts that widen and their endless roots curl up more like reptiles that plants “. Tomb Raider has strengthened the narrative of a site in Angkor Wat of discoveries, adventures and explorations that have not always been useful for the conservation of the site. Ta Prohm is now called the “Tomb Raider Temple” and, as Winter writes, blurs the “boundaries between authenticity, reality and fiction” until Angkor is reduced to “a visual spectacle, culturally and historically disarmed”.

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Angkor Thom, Bayon Temple

The Bayon is a well-known and richly decorated Khmer temple at Angkor in Cambodia. Built between the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as the official temple of the Buddhist King Mahayana Jayavarman VII, the Bayon is located in the center of Jayavarman’s capital, Angkor Thom. After the death of Jayavarman, it was modified and augmented by the Theravada Hindu and Buddhist kings according to their religious preferences. The most distinctive feature of the Bayon is the multitude of serene and smiling stone faces on the numerous towers that protrude from the upper terrace and cluster around its central peak. The temple is also known for two impressive series of bas-reliefs, which present an unusual combination of mythological, historical and banal scenes. The current central body of the Japanese government team for the preservation of Angkor (the JSA) described the temple as “the most obvious expression of the Baroque style” of the Khmer architecture, in contrast to the classical style of Angkor Wat

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Phnom Bakheng Temple

Phnom Bakheng in Angkor, Cambodia, is a Hindu and Buddhist temple, dedicated to Shiva, built on a hill with the same name, where the first city was founded. It was here that Yasovarman transferred his capital from Roluos. Its capital, called Yasodharapura, was larger than Angkor Thom, which arrived later, and was centered around the hill of Phnom Bakheng. The Bakheng temple design borrowed from the Bakong was built 20 years earlier. Both are stepped pyramids of ascending square terraces. We know that temple work began at the end of the ninth century. The temple was called Yasodharesvara, due to its protecting divinity, which means Lord bringing glory. In 928 the temple was abandoned, only to be briefly rehabilitated in 968 by Jayavarman V.

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19:30 if you want *** Recommended option – Apsana Dance Dinner, typical dinner and traditional costume dance (890 thb / person).

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Day 3

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06:30 Breakfast at the hotel and then the driver will take you to the airport for the return flight