Magic

Day 378
We were up early and I got downstairs for breakfast before Nicole. Today was a very exciting day. Today I was going to Angkor Wat.

We had two tuk tuk drivers for the price of one. The older one, who told us to call him Sally, was training his younger brother whose name I can't recall. Sally spoke English well and seemed to know quite a bit about the temples.

Our first stop were the temples in the area known as Angkor Thom, built in the 12th century. This used the be the downtown area of a city, but only the temples remain. The first temple we explored was called Bayon. This is one of the most famous ounes because it has 216 giant heads carved out of stone. No one is really sure who they are meant to depict, but it is most likely the king who built them. Along with the heads there were a lot of carvings on the walls. The best one depicted 12th century Cambodian life.

Close by was one called Baphuon. This temple had been taken apart by archaeologist's before the civil war, but their notes were lost in the mayham. It has taken loads of research to put the stones back together again. Just a bit further down was the Elephant Terrace which was covered in elephants.

Next up was Ta Prohm, this is where Tomb Raider was filmed. The stones of this temple were slowly being choked by the forest. It was just stunning. The forest makes it magical, but it is also slowly destroying the temple and there are ares that are roped off due to an imminent chance of collapse. I took us some time to wander around the entire complex.

The last temple of the day was Angkor Wat, the whose three spires is on everything from the flag to the beer in Cambodia. This is also the largest religious building in the world. It took us forever to go through each of the corridors and I'm sure that we missed one or two. The whole thing was just amazing. In fact, everything about the Angkor temples was just amazing. Even my jaded mind was blown away.

Before getting dropped off we picked up a bus ticket for Bangkok and set a time for the next day with our tuk tuk driver.

It had been beyond hot all day and we were happy to have only cold water showers. For dinner that night we went to Dead Fish again. Afterwards we went to a few bars before heading back to our hotel and calling it a night.