A tuk tuk picked us up and we drove in the dark to the temples. It was still pitch black when we arrived and using my phone light we followed people to the front of Angkor Wat. Luckily not too many people had arrived just yet, we got ourselves a good spot in front of the lake with no our tourists blocking our view of a good picture. It soon became packed with a ridiculous amount of people all here to see the sunrise behind the temple . Here are my pictures as it got lighter, unfortunately there was too much cloud coverage so we didn't actually see any sun, but it didn't really matter as we were still glad we did it.
It looked pretty amazing, I'm not sure of you can really tell in my iPhone pictures but on my camera the mirror of the temple in the water is so clear.
We then headed in to explore. Angkor Wat according to Lonely Planet is the ultimate expression of Khmer genius and it is only matched by a few select spots on earth such as, Macchu Picchu, not only that but it is also the world's largest religious building. It is a symbolic representation of Mt Meru, which is basically the Mt Olympus of the Hindu faith and home to the ancient gods. Angkor Wat is surrounded by a giant rectangular moat which is 190m wide, measuring 1.5km by 1.3km.
The details on the stone are so precise and there many different little patterns and images of Buddhas.
We then visited Angkor Thom, which is recognised as the last capital of the Khmer empire which conceals many temples. The gates that took us inside the temple were the first vision of interest, they are flanked by a monumental representation of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, 54 demons and 54 gods took part in a huge tug of war on the causeway. Each gate is huge with the faces of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara etched into the stones.
The first temple we visited in Angkor Thom was Bapuon, which is often recognised as the world's largest jigsaw puzzle, as before the civil war archaeologists took it apart piece by piece but their precise records were destroyed during the rein of the Khmer Rouge. However it has now been restored.
I can't remember which pictures of mine represent this temple, however in the majority of temples there is a Buddha to which Nath and I were basically forced by a little old lady to pray with incense to the Buddha, and then they put a bracelet on us for good luck. Basically it's all a bit of a con, as they then make us pay. This happened twice.
The third temple we visited was Bayon. Bayon is located right in the centre of Angkor Thom and is the state temple of Cambodia's legendary king, Jayavarman VII. 54 of the gothic towers are famously decorated with 216 enormous smiling faces of Avalokiteshvara which bare a similar resemblance to the king.
And finally just outside of Angkor Thom we visited Ta Phrom which is also famous as the location where Tomb Raider was filmed. Ta Phrom is a 12th century Mahayana Buddhist temple. This one was the most different, as the stone had turned slightly green and the roots of the trees were huge.
This was probably our favourite as it was the most different. We found that many of the temples that we were taken to were similar and even though we enjoyed seeing the ones I described above, it did get a little repetitive and we only did the 1 day cycle. Some people do the 3 day cycle!!!
We got back to the guesthouse around midday and had some well-deserved chilling out and watched a film. We then headed to the night market in the late afternoon and got some little gifts. For dinner, Nath had sweet and sour chicken with pineapple and it looked like this.
And I had the traditional Cambodian dish of Chicken Amok.
For the following day, we had booked a day bus to Bangkok.
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