Angkor Temples Day 1.

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Today our Tuktuk driver picked us up at 8am and took us to the start of the Angkor Temple area. We began by visiting Angkor Wat, the largest and most famous temple. The temple and surrounding scenry was beautiful and we took about 2 hours to walk around it all. The inside of the temple had many passages all with reliefs on the walls depicting different religious stories and legends. There were also many monkeys around the ruins blocking our paths!! At the centre of the temple was a very steep climb up to the central tower which provided stunning views. After meeting back up with our tuktuk driver we went to Angkor Thom, an ancient city housing many more temples. We drove through the south gate which had 54 gods on one side and 54 demons on the other. The central gate head had a face on each side too that depicted, air, water, earth and forest. Once inside our first stop was Bayon Temple which was just as amazing as Angkor Wat. It had 54 towers each with 4 faces on which resulted in a staggering 216 faces staring down at you. The temple is more Hindu than Buddhist and represents the intersection of heaven and earth. It took us around an hour to walk around and had many upward climbs giving us more views of the area, it was also in more of a ruined state that Angkor Wat yet this seemed to add to it's beauty. Apart from Angkor Wat, all the other structures are left to the elements.

Next we walked to Baphuon Temple, a three-tiered temple mountain dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva. From here we walked along the Terrace of Elephants which was used by Angkor's King to look over his returning victorious army. At the end of the wall we came to Terrace of the Leper King. The central statue is of the Hindu God Yama yet due to moss and consequent discolouration the statue is reminiscent of a person with leprosy and fits into a Cambodian legend of an Angkorian king who had leprosy.

Afterwards we had lunch in the market stall area and browsed around before returning to the hotel before the afternoon rain began. Once it had stopped we went out to explore the Old Market and thought it was appropriate to have a pint of Angkor beer! On our walk back to the hotel we passed a village school in someone's garden, offering free evening english lessons to all ages. We stopped and watched for a while until we were invited inside to participate. We plan on going back tomorrow evening. In the evening we went to see a traditonal Khmer dance performance in a massive restaurant which was great and you ate dinner as you watched it. Tomorrow we explore more of Angkor.

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