Day 14 – Siem Reap

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Today started super early; we were up at 4:15am to be ready to catch the bus out to watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat.
We made our way out and literally took hundreds of photos. It was pretty but a lot of clouds had moved in so we didn’t quite get the full effect but the photos turned out pretty good. We met back up with the rest of the group and Mr Chen, our tour guide took us on a 2 hour tour of Angkor Wat.
Angkor Wat is the world's largest religious building. The temple is at the top of the high classical style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors.
By the 12th century Khmer architects had become skilled and confident in the use of sandstone (rather than brick or laterite) as the main building material. Most of the visible areas are of sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and for hidden structural parts. The binding agent used to join the blocks is yet to be identified, although natural resins or slaked lime have been suggested. Mr Chen told us that the sandstone used for the building was brought hundreds of kilometers by elephants. Poor elephants. It is a very beautiful building with some magnificent decoration all over the inside of it.
After our tour we headed back to the hotel and had about 5hours of free time. Sophie, Jackie and I walked down to the shopping strip. Jackie wanted to change over some travellers cheques and I wanted to find a place to burn some photos on a DVD. Sophie was just happy to come for the walk. We stopped for lunch at a KFC, and we were quite looking forward to it until they told us they had no chicken burgers, only popcorn chicken and pieces. After lunch we walked back to the hotel for a little bit of time by the pool before we were meeting in the lobby at 2:15pm for our tour out to the ‘Tomb Raider Temple’.
On our way in to the temples we came across a group of monkeys. They were so cute but we had been warned to watch our belongings as they are trained to steal things of tourists.
The first temple, called ‘Prasat Bayon’ was absolutely stunning. It was built at the end of the 12th century was the last state temple to be built at Angkor, and the only Angkorian state temple to be built primarily as a Mahayana Buddhist shrine dedicated to the Buddha. We took a lot of photos here and looking at back at them the back drop is so pretty that it looks like we have been green-screened into them. After this we made our way round to ‘Ta Phrom’, also known as the ‘Tomb Raider Temple’ as it was used as a location in the film Tomb Raider. It was built in the Bayon style largely in the late 12th and early 13th centuries and unlike most Angkorian temples, Ta Prohm has been left in much the same condition in which it was found: the photogenic and atmospheric combination of trees growing out of the ruins and the jungle surroundings have made it one of Angkor's most popular temples with visitors. It made for some very cool photos. While we were walking around the boys decided to climb up on to the broken wall area because they thought they would get some better photos. When Joey pulled his camera out of his pocket along with it came his ATM Bank card which then fell down over a meter below all the broken pieces of rock. So in a team effort, they spent the next 20minutes moving pieces of rock around trying to get at it, eventually they reached it by Joey holding Luke’s ankles and dangling him down between some rocks.
We headed back to the hotel where again we had some time by the pool before getting ready and meeting up for our last dinner on Contiki. We went to a restaurant where the main meals were only $4.50 and the cocktails were only $2. James and I were trying all the different cocktails, in the end trying 3 different ones each. For dinner I had a Linguini Pasta dish that was quite nice. We then moved on to a bar called ‘Angkor What?’
This place was fantastic. It was playing all commercial chart topper music, you could write on the walls and they had ‘buckets’ of spirits for only $8. It was the best place for our last night of Contiki. We danced, drank, laughed and took so many photos (which on review, some had to be deleted, terrible). The only downside to this place was that there was a serious lack in air-conditioning; it was terrible. I’ve never sweated so much in my life; the guys were literally wringing out their shirts. But it was well worth it, the best night out of the whole trip. We caught tuk tuks back to the hotel at about 2:30am where some people hit the pool, the rest of us sat reminiscing about the trip in the comfort of mine and Jackie’s air-conditioned room. It was about 3:00am when we decided it was time to get some sleep. And it was at this point where the hellish events started.
It turns out that something I’d eaten had not agreed with my tissue-paper-tough stomach and I spent the next 3 and a half hours visiting the bathroom every 10-15minutes. Nice.

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