Angkor Wat

Angor Wat is massive. We went to see the sunrise over Angor Wat on our last day because "all the guidebooks said to do it" (per Mom's request). So we were up and in a van at 5:30am so we could get there to watch the sunrise, along with practically every tourist in Siem Reap (a LOT of Asian tourists, not a lot of white people). 

My brothers, walking towards the main temple in the sunrise. 

Mi madre

Along the temple walls, there are thousands of depictions of Apsara, who's this minx-y little character who either represents a Hindu goddess or each of the Cambodian king's concubines. 

They (guides, book sales people, people who worked there) kept referring to her as "sexy". But they also calling tank tops, dresses, etc., "sexy", so I don't know if they actually meant sexy, or just racy, or just another word for female. I bought a fairly conservative dress (it was sleeveless and knee-length, but it had WRECK IT RALPH on it) and the lady wrote out the receipt as "sexy dress". Really not that sexy. (I'll probably post that on another blog post)

Library among the temples

Hiring a tour guide (set price of $15 for about an hour and a half) made the trip way more interesting because he pointed out little parts of the temple that had major significance. For example, this square that my mom is standing on (with her sandals and elephant pants) is the center of the very symmetric center temple in Angkor. Because the original inhabitants of Angkor Wat (which was a religious city back till the 1430s?) believed that Angkor Wat was the center of the universe, that makes this square the very very center of the universe. 

Buddha falling apart in a minor temple, in the "outlying" area of Angkor Wat. 

Tickets to Angkor Wat (as well as outlying temples) were $40 for a three day pass ($20 for one day, $60 for 7-day even though you can use that pass over a month long period) per person so it wasn't cheap. In addition, apparently practically none of that money actually goes back to Angkor, the people who work there, or the restoration efforts. The ticketing is managed by a private company, the owner of which is besties with one of the officials in the Department of Tourism.*

*This is all according to a guide, as well as some other locals, who seemed very accepting of the ongoing corruption in Cambodia.