Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Siem Reap


Well we got up fairly early after a false start where we both ended up going back to bed to sleep for another 30 mins. After getting some take away breakfast from our hotel we were on our way to Angkor Wat, we arrived outside the moat which surrounds the complex and walked up a little way where we crossed over the moat on a huge bridge to the main gate, after the gate you can see the 5 spires of Angkor Wat which unfortunately for us were obstructed by some lovely scaffolding covered in green cloth! So we headed in and were amazed at how steep the stairs leading up to the top levels were (our guide told us this is so that when people entered the temple it was hard for them so they appreciated they were entering into a place for Gods) at the rear of the complex there are wooden steps built for tourists (after some tourist fell off the original steps and broke their leg) we climbed the steps which don’t really look that big but once your up the top it is a great view and looking down from the top of the steps is a little scary. We walked around the top which has a few rooms with statues of Vishnu and other Hindu Gods. After taking plenty of photos we made the steep descent and left Angkor Wat and headed for Angkor Thom which is a walled in city and contains Bayon Temple, Bayon is very different to Angkor Wat as it was built by a Buddhist king, it contains huge statues of the kings face which face in 4 directions, again a lot of restoration work going on ruined it a little but the huge faces are quite amazing, following Bayon we walked around Angkor Thom a little more seeing various other ruins. After some lunch we headed to Ta Prohm which is definitely our favorite! It is left a little more to nature and has huge trees growing amongst the ruins, with the trees roots seemingly both holding the stone slabs together and yet slowly over years pushing them apart, it was really beautiful with the only shame being heaps of tourists. After Ta Prohm we decided to head back to the hotel as it had been a long and very hot day and we were both exhausted. Once back home we quickly headed out to dinner making a stop off at the fish foot massage place we went to yesterday, we again tried the fish massage followed by a $2 neck/back/shoulder massage which went for 30 minutes! Then we had Cambodian BBQ, we cooked our own meat at our table and it was delicious! We had beef and snake!! The snake was fantastic - like a mix between chicken and fish. After dinner we headed back home as we have a very early start tomorrow to get out for sunrise at Angkor Wat.

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