So we started the day bright and early at 9am; and our first
stop was the famous Angor Wat. This place was big, spacious and hot. Seriously
humid and hot; I was dying, thankfully I got to wear my awesome fisherman
pants.
Anyways, there were Naga, or the queen of snakes,
surrounding the whole area, which was like 13 kilometers.
There were Monkeys too; and they were a bit aggressive
towards people who had bags or just looked at them.
On the main temple building there was a base relief that was
on the perimeter of the walls. The relief showed a story that if told would
take 48 hours to tell.
They had a few room in the temples that were for pools too!
Throughout the temple were dancers base relief and each of
them had a unique hairstyle.
Nearing the end I am pretty sure I was getting heat stroke.
We went to a restaurant for lunch and the timing was perfect
because the moment we got to it, the weather took a turn for the worse. Rain
and a ton of it came down.
But lunch was divine! My favorite was the salads
surprisingly, normally I hate the salads. We had a banana flower salad, sour
beef soup, fish and chicken stir fry, and for desert pumpkin custard.
With all the rain that came down, the day did cool off a bit
but still very hot.
We stopped at a silver shop; it was nice mainly because the
air conditioning.
The next temple we went to was the Bayon Temple, which was
in the area of Angor Tom.
This place was my favorite, the entrance was
lined with warriors holding up a snake god, each face was originally stolen but
the government came back and replaced them. The tunnel gate had bats flying
around in the upper area. It was very cool.
The actual temple had faces on the towers; most of them
complete. I swear this place was sooo cool; I felt like Indiana jones walking
and climbing around.
Another fun story about the Bayon temple that our guide
shared with us; was when the Cambodian people found the Bayon temple they were
chased away by tigers. Apparantly, this temple was a favorite birthing and
rearing place for baby tigers. So cool!
Near the end of exploring the temple, it started to rain again.
So we jumped on the bus, to get to the
other spots. It was still raining when we passed an elephant terrace. It had
all of these cool elephants statues. Our guide was just going to stop and let
us take pictures from the bus. We felt like we wouldn’t get this chance again
so I and my sister and Christy and Barb jumped out of the bus and ran through a
field of mud and got our pictures. I got splashed and soaked but it was a neat
experience.
Our last temple was the sunset temple. We climbed to the top
and just sat and watched the sun set. While we watched I sketched for a bit and
just enjoyed the beauty of the surroundings.
There were a ton of clouds. So it was hard to see the sun
set but still was magical.
We went back to the hotel and had a quick rinse and change
then went to the Cambodian circus.
It was a smaller show but still awesome. They were very
slapstick; the story was about ghosts and school kids reaction to them. We had
popcorn to enjoy and before the performance began I had Amok fish again; so
tasty.
The show itself had contortionism, chair balancing, flips
and throws, fabric airial gymnastics.
Afterwards, we got a tuktuk back to the hotel.
Another awesome day in Cambodia!
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