Siem Reap & Angkor

Siem Reap is the town that grew at the gate of the world's largest religious monument and decided to be worthy of the job: a service town with a soul, French-shuttered lanes and night markets on one side, and six kilometers north — past the moat that still holds the sky — the stone ocean of Angkor: Angkor Wat's five towers, the Bayon's two hundred smiling faces, Ta Prohm held together and pulled apart by the same silk-cotton roots.

The sensible traveller buys the multi-day pass and refuses the checklist: Angkor Wat for one sunrise — shared, yes, and still worth it —, the Bayon in early light when the faces wake one by one, Ta Prohm before the buses, and the small far temples in the afternoons, where the guards nap and the carvings get personal. Back in town: fish amok, a foot massage of dubious science and honest results, and the Old Market at dusk.

The Guide's honesty: Angkor is a marathon in a sauna — temple mornings, pool afternoons is the sustainable liturgy —; dress covers shoulders and knees at the sacred summits, and the guards do enforce it; the children selling magnets at the gates belong in school, and every guidebook, this one included, asks you not to buy; and the Tonlé Sap floating villages deserve a responsible operator or none at all. Angkor has waited nine centuries; it rewards the traveller who does not rush it.