Angkor Wat and Temples Galore

This trip isn't even close to being halfway over, but I know that one of the highlights will have been seeing Angkor Wat, the eight wonder of the world. There's no other word to describe it other than amazing. We were there for sunrise, which meant a 4:30am wakeup call, but it was pretty much worth it. We saw all of the biggies that first day - the temples people usually think of when Cambodia or Angkor Wat comes to mind. So here goes, prepare for a big photodump.


Angkor Wat at sunrise


me in a long, long corridor


sunrise


me and Brittny


intricate carvings are the name of the game at the temples of Angkor


ladies


monk




Cassie and Jayne with Tom, their tuk-tuk driver


us in front of Bayon, the temple with the faces carved into stone





elephant terraces


Ta Prohm - one of the temples where Tomb Raider was filmed


so cool!


all of us in front of a really awesome tree
On the way to some more temples, we stumbled upon some monkeys. They were friendly to Brittny and Cassie, who were feeding them fruit, but I steered clear. One took a lunge at me, so I figured I'd stick to photographing the little beasts.






Onto our second day of temple seeing. For $40, we got a 3-day pass to see as many temples as we could handle, and we still probably saw less than half of them. That tells you just how big the complex is... it's a lot more than just Angkor Wat!










cuteness!
Unfortunately by the 2nd and 3rd day, I stopped being able to keep track of all the names of the temples, so it kind of ended up being a blur of ruins and trees. A very beautiful blur, but I can't give many details on what exactly I saw. Oh well, I just know I saw some cool shit!

Yesterday we left Siem Reap for Pnom Penh, Cambodia's capital and largest city. I could tell the difference immediately. Siem Reap had a much more laid back, see temples all day and chill out on pub street by night kind of place. It wasn't the hectic, dirty city Pnom Penh seems to be. Luckily we booked ourselves into a really nice hostel with a pool and its own bar and restaurant, so we can chill out away from the city grime before setting out on some of the most depressing sightseeing possible. Tomorrow we'll visit the Killing Fields, an area where the Khmer Rouge murdered anyone who was suspected of opposing the government, as well as their entire family. As if that weren't depressing enough, we'll also see S-21, a school that was converted into a prison. So I'll check in later with the results of that.