Really early day today! Was out of the door by 5 am to see the sunrise. Pratna, our guide was on time as was Paul, the tuk tuk driver.We rode out to Angkor Wat, but 1 km from the temple, the gas in the tuk tuk finished. What?? Really? Luckily it was a cloudy day so we were not going to see the sunrise - that is also the sad part, but if we had missed it because of the gas, I would have been ticked off. There were many other tourists on the way. Our driver got another tuk tuk driver to take us to the temple.
The temple is just an awe inspiring sight. But the immensity of it cannot be imagined from the front. We yet have to go in; we waited outside for the sun to come up. The reflection of the temple in the little lake in the front was graceful. Waited for 30 mins - but no sun. Had a cup of tea and then started the tour. The entire tour took 3 hrs (and ate up all my camera battery!). We were in no rush. There were a lot of carvings on the wall. No doubt that anyone can enjoy it, but it really helps to be a Hindu. 90% of the carvings were Hindu mythology.
There were apsaras everywhere - 1008 all in all. Really gracious! The humidity was high so I felt a little tired, but otherwise really good tour. The temple was Vishnu temple but kept going back and forth to Buddha. We could have spent more than 3 hrs, but the heat was too much and we had other temples to see.
There were some stairs that went up and gave some excellent views of the temple campus. It is huge!
Next on the list was
Angkor Thom - which is a complex of 3-4 temples. Below is the entrance to the complex. Most of these temples are Buddhist temples
The first one was
Bayon - amazing! There are more than 50 Buddha heads in the temple. Really something else!
The second one was
Baphuon.
Second temple was
Pimenaka
Then third -
Elephentress
The last place was not really a temple but a place built by the king dedicated to people with leprosy. It was a spread out place with little towers.
It was only lunch time by now!! 12 pm. Lunch was at an appointed place by the touring agency - but it was good. The vegetable curry was good. Vegetable rolls - not so good... But it was a lot of food.
The next temple we went to
TaProhm. This was the most interesting of all the temples. Angkor Wat is big, but this one had completely different character! It was so picturesque. Trees were growing everywhere.
I was beat after this last temple. We were supposed to go to a mountain to see some waterfalls, but decided to see the floating village instead. It was only 3:30 pm at this point. This was a 30-40 min ride out of Siem Reap. Then we took a boat ride out on
Tulisap Lake. The floating village was a lot of people living on boats, different sizes. The school was on the lake, there was grocery shopping going on on the lake via boats, taxi service. Amazing! From what our guide told us, these are all Vietnamese immigrants, mostly poor.
We sat in one of the floating restaurants until sunset, which really did not happen because of the clouds. We went back on the boat, and then by tuk tuk back to the hotel. It was time for dinner and shopping. We went for Indian food at Taste of India, it was good. then during shopping we got food massages for $5. Felt really good after the entire day of walking and touring.
