Angkor Wat

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Ancient temples here we come…. We hired a tuk tuk driver as our guide and off we went.

Angkor Wat was built by Suryavarman II in 1112-52 and it was amazing to see the temple still in such good condition. Makes New Zealand seem a newborn infant in comparison to how old all these temples were. We visited Angkor Wat for both sunset and sunrise, along with every other tourist, but it still was impressive.

We headed into Angkor Thom, which has five monumental gates and inside contained many temples including the temple of Bayon, which has 216 gargantuan faces all over the temple. It was a bit eerie to have eyes looking at you from every direction.

The Baphuon temple is the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle as archaeologists dismantled it in the civil war and made a map of how to put it back together, however the Khmer Rouge destroyed these and now it’s a matter of figuring out which bit fits with what.

The Terrace of Elephants and Terrace of the Leper King were less intact but you could imagine that when they were new they would have been very impressive.

Our favourite temple and the one we spent the majority of our time, was at Ta Prohm. The temple was where Tomb Raider was filmed. This temple has been taken over by nature and it was amazing to see how over hundreds of years the trees had become the structure for the temple and if they died the temple would fall down.

Other temples we visited were Beng Thom, Preah Khan, Preah Neak Pean, Ta Som and Eastern Mebon.

And whew we are templed out….

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Photos

Angkor Wat Temple stairs
The stairs are so step up to the temple that railings have been put in for the tourists

Baphuon Temple
A big Jig-Saw Puzzle

Preah Khan
The temple is falling in

Preah Khan Temple
Roof caved in