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Over Wat
This morning we made it out the hotel at 5am as planned and headed towards one of the most famous temples; Angkor Wat for "sunrise". I had been warned it takes a long time for the sun to come up so I did wonder if it would be worth it. We and several hundred other people wandered close to a lake in front of the temples in the dark. From about 6am the light started to increase quickly revealing the temple structure (hard to get a good picture of) and also a completely clouded sky. I've found sunrises to be a bit of a let down, you never see the sun and you end up waking up far too early for absolutely nothing. I think I may have seen one or two good ones at Glastonbury by staying up all night but I can't quite recall!
After some overpriced breakfast (first coffee with condensed milk) we navigated around the temple. The area is huge (around a kilometre squared) but maybe not as overcrowded as I expected. We did have to queue at some point to get to the third level, up a set of stairs that were at a 45 degree angle (and queue to get back down). The Angkor Wat temple was built late 12th century.
We then made our way to Banteay Kdei, some locals wanted to look at the Angkor book we brought, on turning to the page one of the guys was confused about the picture. It has a interpretation of what the temples would have looked like but he said the colour was all wrong and looked more Thai. A young girl with them also said her and her mum were in the picture of how it is now, sat by the arch of the temple!
Next up was Ta Prohm, well known for the many trees that have grown through and over the temple (much more than Ta Som from the previous day). Also, it was filmed as part of the Tomb Raider movie (I've not seen this). Amazing to think little seeds grew and powered through the structure.
By this point we were getting a little bit 'templed out' but we wanted to see Angkor Thom that includes the Bayon Temple and the Terrace of Elephants. We struggled through, albeit at a quicker pace than the other temples. The terrace is covered in carvings of Elephants on one side and Lepers on the other, in the centre were three larger elephant sculptures. Bayon is a maze, it has a exit/entrance on all 4 sides and very easy to get disorientated and end up out the wrong exit like we did! It has large carved faces, apparently over 200 existed on 50 towers in its original form although there are only about 35 towers left. This was the last of the larger temples constructed early in 13th Century.
We got back to the hotel around 1pm. A great Red Chicken Curry baguette for lunch made me nap for the following 2 hours (the baguettes here are very soft like Vietnam).
A Tuk-Tuk then picked us up and took us to the Angkor Putt course. 14 holes of adventure golf with some temples on top of the courses. It's probably one of the harder ones I've played, often missing the par score but then catching up every so often (I was 10 off at the end of the game). At least I managed to beat Tash again (I play much better away from home). I also drank some lychee iced green tea which was great.
Dinner was at a vegetarian restaurant called Peace Cafe, we had some Asian Nachos (with Basil, Aubergine, Lime Leaves and some other stuff) and Fried Tofu and Basil. Needless to say it was also very good, so was the ginger and lemongrass juice I had.
Bowls of rice; 22
Temples; 9
Tuk-Tuk rides; 12
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