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. 

Cambodian Fishing Village

As part of our first day tour around Siem Reap, our driver took us to a fishing village (either Komphong Khleuang or Komphong Phluk, I don't remember)

We rented a larger boat to take us through the fishing village (it was $100! for only an hour! I am 99.99% sure that the taxi driver was lying to us, ripping us off, and sharing the kick-backs with the boat "captain" and the ticket vendor)

Mom got to take her photos

And there was this guy, with his super small "shorts"

Very different than the fishing village we went to in Ha Long Bay (Vietnam). Probably because this one is in a massive man-made lake, so they can put their houses on stilts. The lake will quadruple in size during the rainy season.

Kids waving from their boat among the mangrove trees

Ta Prohm - Tomb Raider Temple of Cambodia

My family and I spent 3 days/ 3 nights in Siem Reap, Cambodia, home of Angor Wat and many other Hindu and Buddhist temples. 

The first day we were there, we hired our taxi driver (with his van) for one day ($35). He took us to outlying temples, including my favorite one of the trip, Ta Prohm (also called "Tomb Raider" temple, either because it was in the movie or because it should have been).

What makes Ta Prohm special is that over the years that the temple was left in ruins, the trees started taking over. They became a part of the temple structure, and now the excavation and reconstruction efforts of Ta Prohm include the trees as part of the landscape.

My brothers and I

Definitely worth checking out; I've never seen anything like it.