Angkor What?!

After arriving by a relatively uneventful flight from Chiang Mai, we were greeted at our Siem Reap hotel with lots of humidity, a welcome drink and massage! Loving Cambodia already (well except my feet were serious chow for something our first night and are now super itchy!). On our first day, we were up at 4:30 AM to brave the crowds for the sunrise over Angkor Wat. It was beautiful!

One of the many beautiful bad reliefs inside Angkor Wat

Though it was already hot and humid by 8 am (and only getting worse), we explored the extensive temple grounds before tuk-tuking to Angkor Thom which was home to a huge palace.

The entire Angkor complex first came to fruition in the 900's and continued til the 1500's and at times it's population swelled towards a million people when London was just 50,000. Crazy! Then we explored the impressive though crumbling Bayon temple, a few other smaller ones and the finally arrived at the infamous Ta Prohm (aka the Jungle Temple). Most people know this from the movie Tomb Raider (that's also when Angelina Jolie filmed here and adopted her first kid, a Cambodia orphan who she named Maddox). This one was awesome!

When first discovered by the Europeans, all the temples were in some disarray and overgrown but they cleaned the others up and thankfully left this one to be natural. However, the growing trees are moving and basically damaging the temples but it's a very cool, almost otherworldly, site to behold.

So many kids trying to sell you stuff!

A few more and we were whisked to our A/C hotel thankfully where we chilled and watched The Killing Fields. Filmed in 1984, so therefore not long after Pol Pot's genocide regime called the Khmer Rouge which decimated the population with its agrarian socialism ideas, the movie is harrowing and graphic. But as all tragedies, we must learn history to avoid repeating it. Lastly was the night market and dinner and drinks with a cool Brit bartender we met that morning at sunrise. More temples tomorrow!

Smile!