Day 8 - Angkor Wat

Sunset Hike (picture through Phils glasses)

2) This is in front of Angkor Wat

3) Climbing 100 feet straight up to the top of a temple

4)Carvings at Angkor Thom in the sand stone

5) Group picture in front of where tomb Raider was filmed...



Day 8 - Angkor Wat Temples

It's been an interesting past few days as the bacterial flora of our stomachs changed to deal with the food here in Cambodia. There have been more frequent restroom stops and they seem to last a little longer. However we are all transitioning pretty well. Our hotel here is more jungle like. Which means more mosquitos, flies, geckos, and I even saw a frog! Our rooms have fans and ac which means they will cool off very quickly. I think we are all excited about this. Our hotel has its own restaurant where we have been going for breakfast and lunch. Today our breakfast was at 6:30 and our bus left at 7:30 for Ankor Tom to beat the heat. Luckily the weather was overcast for half the day. It was on this bus that we met out tour guide for the day Tea (he was only 25 dollars for the whole day!) Tea studied for 3 years to become a guide and he said it costs 3000 which is a LOT here. Tea also told us how everything costs money. He said that if you want a wife you have to pay the father for her. If you want a Dr. as your wife she will cost you a fortune. His quote was "no money no honey!" I asked what if you are the doctor? He responded: If you are the Dr. then your wife is free. I asked him how many wives can you get for free and he laughed saying only 1. 60% of marriages here are stil arranged. The best part about Tea is that he sounded like Stewie from family guy saying yes yes at the end of every sentence. We all couldn't stop laughing after we figured that out. Plus he also had a huge crush on Reanna!
  Our first temple was Angkor Thom. Wow was this thing huge! We walked along it's perimeter learning about the carvings in sand stone on it's sides. The carvings told stories of their lives showing love, war, power, sports, and their way of life. They were incredibly detailed. This place was a photographers dream. Everyone had their camera out snapping shots. By the end of today I took over 300 shots wow and completely drained my battery. The temple stood tall dwarfing all the people around it. We were told that the sand stone for the temple came from the ground 70 kms away where it was soft and easy to carve. These stones weighed tons. One of the students from our group remarked that it felt like an adult jungle gym because we were climbing all over the ruble. After visiting this temple we were led to another which was probably 100 feet high. We all climbed it not looking down because it was so steep. At the top we had expansive views of Angkor Thom and it's surrounding jungle. Next we went to the temple where tomb raidor was filmed. This temple was sweet because it had trees growing in it, out of it, through it, and on top of it. Yes a tree actually planted itself on top of a temple where it's roots then travelled down to the ground. I'll post a picture of this one! It even had a treasure room where at one point there was a plate of gold weighing over 500 kilograms! Most of the temples were partially destroyed due to wars over religion, land, or from being abandoned in the forest for hundreds of years. One of the coolest parts of the temples was that they all had moats around their perimeters. Some moats were small because their temples were small while others were HUGE like the moat of Angkor Wat. This moat was more like a lake. You could easily waterski comfortably in it. The most amazing part about this is that it was all built by hand. We soon learned from Tea that Angkor Wat was by far the largest temple. It took 50,000 workers 37 years to build and was never fully finished. It had 4 pools on the inside which Phil Jumped into to practice his freestyle. The sad part about this temple is that all of it's statues were stolen or taken by different museums. This temple was also filled with gold and jewels which "somehow" went missing. It took us a few hours to tour Angkor Wat and by this time we were all pooped. Thats when we started our trek up to the top of a mountain where we could watch the sunset. There were probably at least 500 people all with their cameras out pointed towards the sun. Phil actually said that this was his favorite part of the trip so far.  I took one picture of the sunset that turned out crazy! Phil gave me his glasses that I used as a lens to shoot thru producing wild colors. Chris somehow got the bright idea to try and climb on top of a sandstone tower and got yelled at when he was almost at the top. Haha it was hilarious. The night ended with a full on Buffett with khmer dancers putting on a show up on stage. This dancing was slow and a little boring to watch but cool nonetheless (yes Mom this was no so you think you can dance). At the end we all ran up on stage to have our pictures taken with the dancers. Today was quite the experience. Tomorrow we have another day off which includes an early morning wakeup call at 4am for a sunrise tour.