Sunrise at Angkor Wat – worth getting up for?

Sunrise at Angkor Wat

We’d have thought it was fairly obvious that a dawn experience, whether sunrise at Angkor Wat, the Taj Mahal or anywhere else you can think of, will vary enormously from day to day. It is clearly unpredictable and beyond anyone’s control. Some mornings offer spectacular explosions of vibrant colours, whilst others grey, overcast scenes and however fantastic the setting may be, that doesn’t affect how dramatic or otherwise the actual sunrise itself will be.

Now we realise watching sunrise unavoidably involves getting up at some ungodly hour in the morning, (well, unless you haven’t gone to bed yet),  and if you are expecting, or at least hoping for, a dramatic red and orange backdrop to your view of the famous towers and you get a dull, grey one you may be disappointed but…

Despite what one guest maintained, we at All Points East are not responsible for early morning weather conditions in Siem Reap and, firstly no-one is obliged to take the ‘risk’ of an early rise and, secondly, we reckon the view as the iconic silhouette emerges from the darkness – even if it is lacking bright colours – is still worth missing a couple of hours kip for.

Anyway, one of the best dawn at Angkor Wat images we’ve seen (with no sun at all) of the famous 12th-century frontage is Gary Latham’s star-lit photo above where he hadn’t even waited to see how the sunrise would shape up let alone wished afterwards he’d stayed in bed but just used a bit of imagination, (and very slow shutter speed), and took that awesome shot.

Now, though we pride ourselves on avoiding the crowds on our itineraries, sunrise at Angkor Wat can get – especially during high season – crowded, but, since you’re probably only going to experience Angkor once, then it’s got to be done, hasn’t it? We do occasionally get asked, “What happens if it rains?” Well, great; the temple will glisten in the rain, there’ll be nobody else there, and anyway, that’s what we’ve got umbrellas for!

We’ve used Angkor Wat as an example, but there are plenty more dawn visits on our various itineraries – again all of which are, of course, optional. We reckon another must is Bagan on our Burma tour, where the early morning light across the temple-strewn plain shows the site at its most spectacular.  A convenient advantage at Bagan is that, unlike Angkor, there is no single dawn vantage point and a wide choice of possibilities makes it easy to find an uncrowded spot.

Lake Inle’s another Burma site that definitely merits a dawn visit and a big plus here is that for whatever reason, not many other visitors seem to do it. Checking out the views and iconic fishing boats on the serene lake before anyone else gets there is certainly well worth getting up early for.

World Heritage Site Sigiriya, on our Sri Lanka tours, is also best sampled at dawn and the winding climb up to the summit in the dark is pretty exciting stuff as well, of course, as being a lot cooler at that time of day.

Plenty more dawn visits to be taken into consideration include: the Can Tho floating market in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, the Gates of Siam on the Hidden Thailand tour, early morning wildlife spotting expeditions at Kinabatangan and Danum in Borneo or the Mount Bromo sunrise tour in Java.

As one of our guests said, “…no problems – there’s so much to see – I’ll sleep when I get home instead!”