Angkor Wat

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Booked a tuc-tuc driver (Wei) for our 3-day jaunt of Angkor Wat temples (thanks to Andy for the tip!), and for $10 a-day, we had our own personal chauffeur who dutifully carted us all over Siem Riep and the Angkor complex in the pimp-mobile chariot with white faux-leather seats! God bless Wei, but we worked him hard, with sunrises and sunsets, plus lunchtime trips back to town for some cold fruit shakes.

The begging in Angkor was possibly the worst I have seen to date, with children mobbing you thrusting trinkets in your face or worse, just following you, tugging at your hand and clothes, whining "one dollllaaaar, give me moneeeeeey". The saddest sight was watching a policeman who was keeping watch at one of the temples trying to sell his Police Badge to tourists as a "souvenir" whining that he had no money.

Up until Angkor, the fjords of Norway had been the highlight of our trip so far, but the temple complex here at Angkor completely blew us away, and even 3 full days of temples hadn't quite sated our appetites. I hadn't realised that Angkor Wat is only one of a huge complex of temples, set in an enormous park-landscape full of trees and fields making it feel a little like the Phoenix Park. One of the temples was Ta Phrom, which had all the trees with their roots growing on top of the temples, and was the setting for the film Tomb Raider. Other surprises included the huge moat encircling Angkor Wat which is 600ft wide, and the huge amount of the temples that have yet to be excavated/ properly preserved. Many of the ruins were just lying around with moss growing on them, and people trampling all over them.

Needless to say, we lost the run of ourselves with photographs (especially in Bayon with the "faces of the jungle" and Preah Khan, easily our favourite temples), and with that, I'll let the photographs tell the story.

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Photos

Pimp my Tuk Tuk!
Me and driver, Wei

Secret Door
Ta Phrom

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