From PP we shipped out to Siam Reap, home to Angkor Wat. The largest temple in the world, this site put all of my other ruined temple sites to shame. Well, at least in size.
Some of the temples were originally built as Hindu sites, but were later used for Buddhist purposes. They are all intricate, huge, beautiful, extremely old and make you wonder how in the hell they were constructed without the use of modern technology. Amazing.According to UNESCO.org –
“Angkor is one of the most important archaeological sites in South-East Asia. Stretching over some 400 km2, including forested area, Angkor Archaeological Park contains the magnificent remains of the different capitals of the Khmer Empire, from the 9th to the 15th century. They include the famous Temple of Angkor Wat and, at Angkor Thom, the Bayon Temple with its countless sculptural decorations.”
The whole site is huge, so most people hire a tuk-tuk driver/informal tour guide for the day. Mr. Sin was the man, and he was quite a cutie.
My camera started acting up this day – UGH – so I didn’t get as many pics as I would like. Adam has some great ones, I will try to steal soon.
My fav temple was actually never finished – it was hit by lightening during construction, so the king decided it was bad luck and abandoned it. But I still love it because of the amazingly crazy stairs you have to climb up to get to the top.
These cement “stairs” are more like small grooves in a wall. It’s quite vertical, the stairs are shallow and they are widely spread apart. We made it up just fine, but one other girl made the mistake of looking down mid-ascent. She needed a little help getting down after that.
All in all it was a beautiful day with beautiful, breathtaking temples. I now have a serious sunburn that shows the exact lines of my tee shirt.
Nice.
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