Sadly, it was a feeling similar to poking your head through the sun gate at Machu Picchu and seeing the ancient ruins for the first time after four days of hiking the Inca Trail.
After meeting up with the archeologist guide, visitors take a cycling tour (bikes are provided) through the temple complex and north toward the south gate of Angkor Thom, to check out the centerpiece of this ancient city, the Bayon temple.
You turned off a quiet narrow lane onto an indistinct track that crossed a field, and stopped at the edge of an ancient pollarded wood, and there, half hidden by a tangle of hawthorn bushes, was a small white picket gate.