I can't tell you every travel story. Somehow I ended up in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The world famous Angkor Wat temples are built in and around this city. You may remember them from the Disney movie The Jungle Book. King Louis sings "I Wanna Be Like You" in one of the temples and his band of monkey friends are dancing around him. I didn't see as many monkeys but this was one of the highlights of my journey.
We got up early to eat breakfast near the first temple. It was our backdrop during the morning hours. We hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day. In Cambodia, they hitch up a carriage to their motorbikes and haul people around (pictured). The temples were constructed in the early 1100s A.D. as shrines to the Hindu god Vishnu. The main temple has carvings in the outer walls (pictured is Vishnu himself). Some of them were converted to Buddhist temples when the previous rulers were conquered. These shots are from the main temple that you see on all the postcards, pictures, and also on the Cambodian flag.
Our next stop was one of the "face" temples. These were the most interesting and the maze-like structure created some cool photo angles to catch these faces. As we wound our way through this temple we also noticed at some of the corners a hideout for bats. The floor gave it away. It stank of bat droppings and we had to take a little detour for fear of a fresh load ending up on us. Other than the bats you just had to be careful of falling rocks, jagged rocks, and spiders. I safely avoided all three. The weather was also blistering hot with temps in the upper 90s. It was probably our hottest day on the trip. We spent almost all of it outside and in the sun. We drank lots of water and found shade when possible. We didn't think too much of it.
We finished out the morning with some other smaller temples that got more into the jungle. After lunch we headed to a temple that is seen in the film "Tomb Raider" with Angelina Jolie. It is falling apart and some of it is because trees are growing up and around the rocks. The last one we visited was similar to the first only on a much smaller scale. I can't really tell you a whole lot about each other than it was really awesome to be there and see it all. I hope my pictures can give you some idea of the sites at Angkor Wat.
We got up early to eat breakfast near the first temple. It was our backdrop during the morning hours. We hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day. In Cambodia, they hitch up a carriage to their motorbikes and haul people around (pictured). The temples were constructed in the early 1100s A.D. as shrines to the Hindu god Vishnu. The main temple has carvings in the outer walls (pictured is Vishnu himself). Some of them were converted to Buddhist temples when the previous rulers were conquered. These shots are from the main temple that you see on all the postcards, pictures, and also on the Cambodian flag.
Our next stop was one of the "face" temples. These were the most interesting and the maze-like structure created some cool photo angles to catch these faces. As we wound our way through this temple we also noticed at some of the corners a hideout for bats. The floor gave it away. It stank of bat droppings and we had to take a little detour for fear of a fresh load ending up on us. Other than the bats you just had to be careful of falling rocks, jagged rocks, and spiders. I safely avoided all three. The weather was also blistering hot with temps in the upper 90s. It was probably our hottest day on the trip. We spent almost all of it outside and in the sun. We drank lots of water and found shade when possible. We didn't think too much of it.
We finished out the morning with some other smaller temples that got more into the jungle. After lunch we headed to a temple that is seen in the film "Tomb Raider" with Angelina Jolie. It is falling apart and some of it is because trees are growing up and around the rocks. The last one we visited was similar to the first only on a much smaller scale. I can't really tell you a whole lot about each other than it was really awesome to be there and see it all. I hope my pictures can give you some idea of the sites at Angkor Wat.
