Angkor Wat Bike Tour: Grasshopper Adventures

An Angkor Wat bike tour is the best way to see and appreciate the ancient Khmer city of Angkor.  The site of Angkor is immense and sprawling through densely overgrown jungle.  To see it all on foot is impossible, and driving from temple to temple doesn’t let you enjoy the quiet and beautiful spaces of land between the crowded temples.  Enter Grasshopper Adventures, an experienced bicycle tour company that specializes in quality, local tours for both novice and experienced riders.  The highlight of our trip to Cambodia was cycling the ancient city of Angkor with our two kids in tow.

Straight up, this is NOT a sponsored post!  We just really loved our tour with Grasshopper Adventures! It was not only excellent value for money, but an amazing experience that we will never forget.

What makes them so great?  

Safety and quality gear: The bikes were in excellent condition and already adjusted to our height before we arrived.  They have bikes for kids and adults.  Our 9 year old son’s bike was the perfect size.  We used a trail-a-bike for our 6 year old daughter, and it worked perfectly!

A unique way to see more than just the main sites:  This was probably the biggest reason we loved this tour!  The main sites like Bayon Temple, Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat can get really crowded and busy.  If you just jump on and off a bus, you are stuck in the crowds all day!  Cycling from site to site on back trails brought us through whole stretches of the ancient city where we didn’t see anyone outside our group!  We saw beautiful, lesser known buildings and temples completely overgrown with vines that are still hiding in the jungle, waiting to be discovered!  This was Lara Croft Territory!!

Personal tour guide:  Our tour guide not only led the way through the jungle, but also acted as a knowledgeable guide at each of the sites.  He provided excellent information about the history of the temples and offered to walk around the site with us if we chose.  You could also opt to tour the temples independently and meet back at the bikes at a designated time.  We liked the freedom this gave us (especially with kids who would get a little squirmy listening to a history lesson!).

They provided everything:  We really just had to show up!  They provided the water (our water bottles were magically filled up at each stop we made on the tour!), and they provided snacks and a full lunch.  

Sites We Saw 

Our tour started at the Grasshopper Adventures office in Siem Reap.  We biked along the edge of the city out into the countryside and eventually through rice paddies into the Angkor Complex.  We never took the main bus routes through the ancient city, but rather took smaller jungle trails and pathways that led to the well known temples and sites.  Stops included:

Ta Prohm: The Buddhist temple engulfed by vines that seems to be swallowed by the jungle.  This is the famed temple in the Lara Croft movie Tomb Raider.

Bayon Temple: This temple is a sea of serene and smiling colossal faces carved in the stone.  It is the centre of Jayavarman’s capital, Angkor Thom, and one of the most iconic site in Angkor.

Angkor Wat: This Hindu turned Buddhist temple is the largest and best preserved temple of the ancient Khmer city. It is the jewel of the Khmer empire! The Khmer King Suryavarman II built Angkor Wat as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. It is one of the largest religious monuments in the world! This temple complex is huge guys!!

Lastly, we saw many smaller and lesser known temples and sites along the way! This was one of the highlights for us. Getting on those back trails and off the beaten bus route was fantastic!

So, have I convinced you that seeing Angkor on two wheels is where it is at??  I hope so!  We do not usually opt for tours when we travel, but this tour was totally worth it and made for a better experience than we could have managed on our own!  Thank you Grasshopper Adventures!