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Published: June 29th 2006
I was up fairly early this morning, around 4:30 AM. There isn't much going on here around that time. I sat around the restaurant and watched the boy sweep the patio until 5:30. Then it was toast and coffee. It was my first experience with a coffee press. Let me be the first to say that they aren't known for their coffee here and I know why. Starbucks won't be offering a Cambodian brew anytime soon. At around 7:30 I hopped in my tuk-tuk and was off to the temples. The first stop was at the main gate to get my ID badge for the week. I splurged on the 7 day pass which set me back about $60. I hear people complain about the price but try to go to Kings Dominion for a week on $60. Anyway, I figured I would get the king of all temples marked off my list first and we headed for Angkor Wat. There are no words and probably no pictures to do it justice. I have to admit that I was all giddy when I first caught site of it. After all, it's what I traveled half way around the world to see
Bas Relief Sculpture
This was one of the thousands of wall sculptures at Angkor Watand now here it was, waiting for me to explore every inch of it, and I think I did. I walked the entire outer gallery (a walled section around the main temple) and marveled at the bas relief sculptures covering wall after wall, for hundreds of yards in each direction. From the Apsara dancers to Hindu gods doing battle to scenes of every day life. It still is hard to believe that they were made hundreds of years ago. After crawling all over Angkor Wat, I moved on to Angkor Thom. This is actually a huge walled area with several temples in it. The largest is the Bayon. There are hundreds of carved smiling faces starring down at you from every tower. Then it was on to the Baphoun. It is under major reconstruction/preservation so all I could do was look at it from the outside. From there I trekked through an entry in a long wall where I found the temple of Phimeanakas. This is a small temple but open to climbing and exploring. Did I happen to mention how steep the stairs on all of the temples are? It's a wonder I could climb them with my big
Apsara Dancer
These dancing ladies are awfully popular. There are literally hundreds of them in every temple. old size 13's. My last stop of the day was the Terrace of the Elephants. If you couldn't figure it out from the name, it is a long wall with huge elephant carvings. There are holes where I assume tusks were sticking out and elephant bas reliefs along the length of it. This brought the end of day one at the temples to a close. I was hot and sweaty and had climbed, walked, and shot for 6 hours. It was quite the first day! When I got back to my room, I dumped my stuff and headed out to eat. I just made it to the cafe when the skies opened up and began dumping by the gallons. I just sat and ate my beef and peppers and enjoyed watching the traffic swim by. It's now 8:15 and I have had my first Kmher massage (which I desperately needed) and am winding things down. I am going to try and upload some pictures with this so we will see how it goes. That's all for now.
Cheers
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Margaret
non-member comment
OMG
Those are fabulous...what an amazing first day!