Nomad Manager

How NOT To See Cambodia’s Preah Ko Temple

The Dalai Lama said that ignorance is the cause of all suffering.
And in this case, ignorance may cause thee loss of $100.

After having stayed at Hariharalaya for a few days, Hanne and I decided we would take a pleasant bike ride (on the back of her bike because I don’t really know how to ride one, save for a couple of lessons in the Philippines and a couple of lessons here with her - gasp!) along the nearby temples (since we were too cheap to pay any sort of fees), which in this case were the Bakong Temple and the Preah Ko Temple.

Having been in Cambodia 5 years ago with my parents, doing the touristy things, I no longer felt the compulsion to see the temples despite the thought that I might have a more profound appreciation for them now. The heat, tourists and $20 were individually enough to put me off from seeing something I’d already seen.

The Bakong Temple was enclosed with high walls so there wasn’t a way for us to see more than we could see from the street, so we moved on from there and proceeded to the Preah Ko Temple.

With no apparent front walls or fortress, Hanne and I proceeded some 25 meters or so from the street so we could at least take a slightly closer picture with the temple without really having to enter per se.

See the ladder and where those tiny people are? Our ignorance led us to believe that that was the real temple “wall”, which apparently, it was not. Before we could take a picture, “temple guards” came hollering asking us where we were going and where our tickets were.

As you know, we cheapskates didn’t have any, and they held us for “questioning” for some 20 minutes or so, calling another guard from the nearby Bakong Temple and showing us the rules which state that people entering temples without tickets would be fined $100. There was a much bigger hullabaloo than there needed to be in this temple with no obvious walls.

With our good looks and pleas of ignorance, we were finally able to apologize enough to the guards and they let us go, but not without giving us a hard time. :D

This is the picture Hanne and I got instead, a horrible self-shot picture further away from the temple.