Woke at 4:30 to be ready at 4:40 for sunrise where only 3 others came with me. Words cannot describe how pretty it was or how annoying the Chinese man next to us was. Too many pictures. Random white horse, which almost looked like I was hallucinating because of how random it was. Saw it again later all dressed up for rides so it made sense. We were worried there wouldn’t be a sunrise due to the rain the night before but we were in luck.
Breakfast had amazing eggs. Left for the temples at 9am. 20USD entry, 15USD for bus and guide which was totally worth it.
The moat around Angkor Wat is 5 meters deep and protects 5 acres inside.
The first temple was Ta Prohm aka the tomb raider temple. It has many types of trees including mahogany, rubber, fig (?) and strangler. Some of the rocks there are lava. Here we noticed the rocks have holes which is how they carried them. They are still doing reconstruction. We went into one room where people beat evil out by beating their chest with their fists. You can hear your beating louder in there.
Next was Angkor Wat. This was where the king hid Buddha statues during wars, put people still came in and stole heads and hands to sell for really good money. The steps are little because it’s easier to carry that way. We learned that head monks wear gold and they probably put it on the Buddha. There are carving of dancers with 40+ different hairstyles and 4000+ different hand and feet positions. We’ll see the dance later but a thumb down means ‘plant’, one finger up means ‘grow’, 3 fingers up means grow ‘more’, touching those fingers mean ‘fruity blossom’, and finally opening the hand means ‘drop’. A man started filming us here. There was a lot of rat droppings as well. There are 4 pools to represent the 4 rivers of India. Found the same spot as the morning to take a photo with reflection.
Lunch nearby. Pretty expensive. Lime juice for 1.5 and a curry-not-curry in a coconut with rice was 5.5. Delicious though. Best meal I’ve had here so far. The coconut was cut into a heart shape. We then got rained in for about an hour and chatted with kids and were shown magic by sit and Visal.
Next was the gate to Bayon which is quite far from the temple itself, then the ruins of Bayon.
It had a lot of faces and reminded me of Promethesus. Here we saw the pulley system they made for the rocks. Because of carvings here we think the people were not slaves. They are happy in the carving and drinking and there is no master other than the king who was not finished.
Next was the elephant wall which had beautiful carvings of elephants (duh) and people. Across were 12 lookout points and between was the elephant training fields. The wall is 5 meter tall and probably 2 meters underground so it doesn’t fall.
World Traveler: Asian Edition 