Day 27: Siem Reap

We went to breakfast at 8am to give us a whole hour to make use of the buffet before meeting our tuk tuk driver Tida at 9am to go the temples of Angkor. Despite being early it was already extremely hot and sunny and the tuk tuk ride for 10km to the temples was a welcome breeze. We stopped once on the way to purchase our one day pass.
We were not aware of the expanse of various temples that made up the temples of Angkor. Our first stop was Angkor Wat which is the national symbol for Cambodia. This temple was impressively huge and took us the best part of an hour to explore. From here we went to Angkor Thom via a bridge to the South gate which had a tower with four enormous faces of the Buddha of compassion carved into it.
Angkor Thom has several different temples within its boundary walls. Firstly we explored The Bayon which was awesome. It had 54 towers in total with a staggering 216 faces carved in them. Everywhere you looked you could see a smiling face of the king in his meditation state looking in every direction. We then walked to the Baphuon with its 70m long Buddha then onto the terrace of elephants and the terrace of the leper king.
Each of the temples are free to explore as you wish which gives you a great sense of adventure when you are climbing in and out of small archways, corridors, different levels etc. Also, we were expecting thousands of people however were pleasantly surprised that even though there may have been thousands of visitors, as the temples of Angkor were spread out so much there was hardly anybody around.
As we were as melting point from the heat and the walking, we found an ice lolly and made our way back to the tuk tuk. Our last stop was Ta Prohm which is described as the Jungle Temple as it set in amongst thousands of trees several of which are growing in, around and on top of the temple itself. It was amazing to see huge trees with their roots snaking through the old ruins. This is the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed and is thought to be as seductive as Lara Croft.
We got dropped off at the Lucky Market for lunch at 2pm then walked back to the hotel to enjoy the last few hours off sun by the pool. We showered and walked into town to meet Brenda and Kevin whom we met in China and Vietnam. On the way to our meeting point we bumped into them and ended up going for a few drinks in a bar with extended happy hour. We then returned to our place to share another beer and continue chatting and catching up.