Angkor Thom Again

After visiting Angkor Wat this morning for sunrise, knowing this would be our final day in the park, we wanted to do all the things we haven't done yet and take the iconic pictures we hadn't taken yet (basically, the pictures you see on the postcards).

The first thing we hadn't done yet is climb the small hill next to Angkor Wat to Phnom Bakheng (phnom means mountain or hill in Cambodian). The path up to the top is wide and gradual because it's used as an elephant path.

You can easily jog up it in 5 minutes, unless you run into Chinese tour groups taking up the entire width of the path, they slow you down. The ruins were under construction - they're putting it all back together. But you still have access to the viewpoint off to the north of it that gives you sweet views of Angkor.

Eventually I found a staircase that leads up to the top of the wat. The temple itself is nothing spectacular, but it was cool to see all the workers putting everything back together.

On the way down, we spotted the happiest dragonfly we've ever met. Just look at its face!

We continued our bike ride toward Angkor Thom. After passing through the gate, we stopped off to watch the monkeys for a bit (you can see lots of monkey pics here) but then continued up to Baphuon. We felt rushed here last night because it was sunset so we pretty much just sat up top to watch it set and then we bolted fast to get out while we still had some light. So we wanted to come back and explore more.

This temple is fun because it's the only one (we know of) where the main entryway is on pillars and you can walk under it! It makes for a fun game of hide-and-go-seek.

After Baphuon, we rode back to Bayon to take some pictures in front of the temple...

...and of the temple with its reflection. We also stopped in one of the pagodas adjacent to the temple.

We said goodbye to Angkor Thom for the final time and rode down toward Angkor Wat. Just west of Angkor Wat is a giant lily pond. The sun was hitting the flowers just right, so we stopped for a while to take some pictures and play around with aperture on the dSLR.

On our way out of the park, we finally got the last picture we have been wanting to get.

And with that picture, we have done everything we wanted to do within Angkor. We've seen all the temples we wanted to see, we've done lots of exploring, we saw sunrise and sunsets, and took lots of cool pictures. We're ready to go to Phnom Penh now.

Angkor Thom

We spent the entire day today in Angkor Thom. This is a walled city just north of Angkor Wat. ("Angkor" is the name of the ancient Capitol city. "Wat" means temple, so Angkor Wat was the main temple for the city of Angkor. "Thom" is Cambodian for big. Angkor Thom was the actual city where people lived.) There are several gates into the city, mainly in the cardinal directions. Inside the walls are numerous temples and ancient structures, the most famous of which is Bayon.

But before you even get there, you pass by these guys, and they're super fun to watch.

Isa was in love with the little baby monkeys. And honestly, can you blame her?

We were on our bikes again today, so we stopped several times when we saw animals on the side of the road. Eventually, we made it up to the first temple: Bayon.

Bayon is famous for two reasons. Probably the most obvious one is all the faces on the towers. Each tower has four faces, all totaled there are more than 200 faces on the temple towers. It's supposedly the face of the king, Jayavarman VII. Kind of like an all seeing big brother is watching you always feeling.

The second reason it's famous is for it's bas reliefs that tell important stories of ancient Khmer history and Hindu mythology.

Next, we rode up to the center of Angkor Thom and had lunch at one of the restaurant stalls. I worked my language skills and the lady gave us the local discount on our meals and our pineapple shake. Yum.

Straight over from the restaurants, we wandered into the Terrace of the Leper King.

I don't know anything about this. If you want to know more, google it. It's an ancient wall with lots of carvings along its zigzagging path.

From here, we entered the inner wall and checked out Phimeanakas ("PEE-mian-aa-KAH"). This is a decent sized mountain temple. I'm not sure why they put new stairs on this on at all. They're almost more difficult to climb than the original stone stairs.

We played around at the top for a while, I talked to the lady at the very top, who prayed for me and Isa to have a long life of prosperity and happiness and good health. I gave her 500 riel, which is about 12.5 cents, and she was very happy.

We left Phimeanakas and wandered north toward Preah Palilay. We came to a river with this awesome bridge we had to cross.

Preah Palilay was almost completely in ruins...

...so we explored for a bit and then went back to the bikes...

...and rode down to the Elephant Terrace.

We walked along the Elephant Terrace for a while until we came upon Baphuon ("Ba-poo-in"). It was getting close to sunset at this point, so most people were heading back to Angkor Wat or Phnom Bakeng (another popular sunset point that we'll go to tomorrow), so they left Baphuon pretty much to us alone.

We sat up top and waited for sunset from there.

When the sun set, we made our way back to the bikes, but it was already dark before we got to Bayon, let alone out of Angkor Thom or the park. It was extremely dark in the park, since there are no street lights or anything. Isa turned on her flashlight on the iPhone and put it in her front basket so she could see/people could see us. We rode back on Charles de Gaulle because there are some lights along that road. It was a nice, pleasant, cool ride back into town.

When we got back to Siem Reap, we stopped by the corner market for some ice cream. It's become almost a nightly tradition to get some ice cream to cap the night. Different countries have had very different options. Here in Cambodia, this is our new favorite.

They're like Bonbons. Vanilla ice cream in delicious chocolate. Very yummy.