Siem Reap ( Ankor), Cambodia

Siem Reap Temples

For our second full day in Siem Reap, Ian and I decided to carry on with our temple visits, this time staying around the city and touring as many sites as we could. For this, we hired a tuk-tuk and driver for the day, who would bring us around the loop and wait for us as we visited the many different temples.

Our first stop was Preah Khan, which displays both Hindu and Buddhist flavors in the intricate engravings on nearly every square inch of stone and in many well preserved statues. From here, we climbed through the massive stones at Ta Prohm, which shared the same overgrown nature as Beng Malea that we had previously visited. This was actually where scenes from the movie "Tomb Raider" was shot, and the trees were crawling over walls and doorways to spectacular effect.

We met out tuk-tuk driver again, and headed toward Angkor Thom, a large complex of buildings and sculptures, highlighted by the towering Bayon temple. Bayon is marked by immense 4-sided stones, with a giant face carved into each side. These silent sentinels glared at you from every angle as you toured the ruins, admiring the scale of construction combined with the intricacy of the detailed carvings in the walls. Around Bayon are smaller sites, including the Temple of Elephants, with- you guessed it - many sculptures of elephants, as well as the Temple of the Leper King.

We decided to head home after a delicious dinner of amok, a traditional Cambodian dish featuring chopped fish or chicken in in a coconut milk sauce laced with turmeric and other spices. We needed to rest up, since tomorrow was our last day in the area and we planned on getting up for sunrise to visit the most famous of all the temples: Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat is the most photographed of the sites around Siem Reap, and justly so. As we arrived in the pink light of the morning, however, we realized that we weren't the only ones with the bright idea to sacrifice sleep for a few pictures of the sunrise. Hordes of tourists were lined up on the steps facing east for this photographic rite (repeated again at sunset). The three immense, knobby towers that are the highlight of Angkor Wat were silhoutted by the rising sun; it was quite a breathtaking site indeed. We eagerly explored the massive complex, surrounded by a wide moat, and purused the murals that were etched into the perimeter of the main building. However, three straight days of crawling around carved rocks was quite enough for us, and we headed back into town to prepare for our trip to the Thai border that afternoon.