Cambodia: Angkor Wat, The Largest Religious Monument in the World . . .

---

We took a 6 hour train journey from Bangkok and then a tuk tuk to the Cambodian border. The border crossing was an exprience! we then took a 3 hour bus journey to Siem Reap where we are staying.

The next day we were up at 4:30 a.m to whitness the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Although it was a bit overcast! it was a great exprience to see the outline of the temple appear from over the lake. The complex of temples is huge, definately not what I was expecting, in fact the complex sprawls around 1000 square kilometers (320 miles) in size! . The guy at the guest house laughed when I suggested if we could ride around on push bike to each temple!!

The most amazing temple for me was the Bayon, which is the temple of faces. The faces on the temple seem to draw you in and I found I wanted to just stand and stare at them as they are so lifelike. There is around 35 towers in the temple each with a face and there are around 120 different faces throughout the temple. The temple is to be considered the most complex of all the temples at Angkor Wat and, when you weave in and out of the rabbit warren like corridors, it's easy to see why. The intricate detail of carvings on the walls of these temples is amazing and you can only wonder how they ever built them.

We have covered most of the main complex in 2 days and tomorrow we are going to Angkor for the sunrise again. We are going to go to our favourite temples and just spend a bit of time at each of them reading or doing a bit of meditation so we can really soak up some of the atmosphere of the place rather than rushing around taking phoots etc.

If you are a keen photographer or like painting this place would be a dream destination for you. Each temple has so much character and different colours as well as the trees that seem to ooze out of the walls. It's a mind boggling very special place and I would urge anyone to come and experience it.

As well as Angkor being amazing the people of Cambodia are really nice people and have made us feel really welcome. Our tuk tuk driver yesterday taught us some Cambodian and taught us about his culture, he also gave us crickets and snake to eat! yum yum 😊

---