Angkor Wat?

With a 4 am wake up call, Aspen and I headed to the Temples of Angkor to catch a sunrise behind the beatuiful temples of Angkor Wat. It was very beautiful in the town of Siem Reap even at 430 in the morning as we drove through, so quiet and peaceful.

There The name Angkor Wat means "City Temple" and the temples of Angkor Wat were built for a king back in the 12th century as his state temple and capital city. Now it stands to be the largest religious building in the world. And wow this temple is massive, all I could think as we wandered through is how more people don't go missing in these giant ruins.  Just the entire area that encloses all these ruins is over 100 square km.

After we finished wandering around Ankor Wat, we headed out to find our tuk tuk driver we hired for the day to head to another ruin. The entire temple of Angkor Wat is surrounded by walls and outside those walls is a giant moat! So to enter and leave the area you have to cross an old stone bridge. We headed outside and were about to cross this bridge when we saw a monkey. And it wasn't the cute kind either, it had a scary looking face with sharp teeth and a bright pink butt. Both Aspen and I grabbed our video cameras and took pictures and what not, when a Asian boy went to get a closer picture with the monkey. The monkey ran away at first and then finally let the kid get close to him. He opened his mouth and it looked like he was yawning but no, he was not an impressed monkey. When the boy sat down to take a picture the monkey jumped at him! He got out of the way fast enough and was just laughing. I was just thinking wow, you are stupid. Aspen and I got out of there pretty fast after that because we both haven't recieved our rabies shot, and we didn't want any close calls with monkeys.

Once we got outside it turned out every tuk tuk driver in the area of Siem Reap was waiting outside the ruins to offer rides to the tourists exiting. We walked around for 25 minutes trying to find our driver. All I could remember is that he had a white helmet and Aspen remembered he was wearing blue. Finally we found him surrounded by other tuk tuk drivers playing a game of chess. The day has already begun to feel long at this point and its only 630 in the morning!

We went to Angkor Tom and explored some more and had to walk to another area to meet our tuk tuk driver. We were walking there when I saw an old ruin that looked like you could climb it, and I wanted to go to the top for some great photo opportunities. Aspen was pooped so she sat down and waited for me while i treked over to the ruins. It turned out to be another old castle for a king. This king was very lucky or dirty whichever way you want to look at it. Every night he got to sleep with a different woman that represented the nine headed snake that was the god of the kingdom. Anyway the stairs for this thing were totally worn out and they rebuilt some wooden ones to take up. They were steep and by the time I got to the top I was sweating enormous amounts. It turned out to be pretty boring at the top, not even any good photo opportunities! I was climbing back down when I saw a girl who was obviously thinking of doing the climb up. She asked me if it was worth it and I bluntly told her no, unless you want to nearly die from the heat and sweating so much!

After we headed to a another huge temple that you could climb. I don't know where all my energy came from but I wanted to climb this one too. Aspen took a seat at the bottom and I began my adventure up. These stairs were the old original stairs, so they were very narrow and steap rock ones that had worn out edges. After the first level I ditched my shoes and climbed up barefoot. I was halfway up and looked down and nearly died, I don't like heights and I began to think I got myself into a situation. How was I going to get back down? I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and kept climbing anyway. I finally got to the top and was walking around taking some pictures and trying to cool down. I was about to trek back down the side I came up when a man came up to me and told me that side was hard and showed me an easier side. It was a ton easier and I didn't have to worry about my death when I went down that side. Thankfully.

After a few more temples and ruins, Aspen and I were tuckered out. It was only ten in the morning but we had been going non stop since 4 am! We decided to head back to the hotel. We had only done a mini tour of all the temples but that was good enough for me. After awhile it felt like we were looking at the same thing over and over. Pretty soon all I was looking for was big spiders hiding in the shadows of the hallways of the ruins. I was ready for a power nap when we got back to the hotel but I ended up chatting with some friends from back home all afternoon and then we went to a little Mexican restaurant and I grabbed some nachos. They were pretty tasty for being Cambodian/Mexican nachos.

A cold shower was calling my name so we went back to the hotel. I had my beautiful shower and crashed for a little bit. After we got up for our nap we were going to head back to the market and pub street to wander around. It started to pour though and a massive thunderstorm. The power went out and we just sat there and watched the streets fill with water and turn into mini rivers! People were trying to drive through them with their bikes and scooters and most of the time ended up having to push them. We thought we would wait until the rain let up to go to the market but it never did. It continued all night and we fell asleep so early, probably as a result of our 4am wake up.

Today we have a Cambodian cooking class lined up! So that will be interesting, hopefully Aspen doesn't blow the place up or something. Time for some breakfast now!