The First-Timer’s Travel Guide to Siem Reap, Cambodia

It was a little past 4:30 AM and I was one of the first people there. It was still almost pitch black so I had to use my cellphone’s LCD display to light the way. Without it, I probably would have tripped and fallen into the moat. I set up my tripod at the edge of the lake and waited for the sun to rise from behind those iconic five spires. At that ungodly hour, I thought I’d be one of the few people crazy enough to push myself out of bed just to take a picture. I was wrong.

Within an hour, a small army of amateur photographers had camped out all along the lake’s edge. Like me, most had tripods. Many had ultra fancy lenses. There must have been several hundreds of us forming 4-5 rows of tourists hoping for that iconic sunrise shot. I guess I wasn’t that crazy after all. Such is the magic and allure of Angkor Wat.

A UNESCO World Heritage site and the largest religious monument in existence, it’s one of the few places in the world that you need to see at…