Siem Reap and Angkor

OK TAKE A SIT, GRAB A BEVERAGE AND GET READY cause this is a long one... Last I left you we hadn't quite gotten to Angkor to check it out yet. 3 days later that is a different story. Making use of our 3 day Angkor Archeological Park pass, we have TORCHED some temples over the past few days. That first day, we headed up to check out the sunset (which is 'free' included in a 3 day pass) with 9 million other tourists (Chinese New Year = tour groups EVERYWHERE). We arrived at around 5, with the park closing at 530, and hoofed it up a dirt path to check out the sunset at Phnom Bakheng - one of the two popular spots for sunset (the other being Angkor Wat). Unfortunately we didn't get up there in time to actually climb the temple, but we saw the sunset from the base and took some photos of our first Angkor temple!! We also people-watched for a while. GREAT place for it. Sarah has so many creepy shots of hilarious people. We ourselves actually got our photo taken by a few... foreigners are a THING here. Descending to the parking lot, we almost got run over by an elephant - I was admiring how dirty my feet were when Sarah jumped backward - I glanced up and saw an elephant RUNNING toward me, no warning from the rider whatsoever, just givin er through the most crowded parking lot ever. I thought it was hilarious. Heading back down to our chariot (tuktuk) we went back into town and ended up meeting up with a couple people we met on our marathon bus ride here, two brothers from Britain, and their American friend who is living in Siem Reap. She knows the secrets! Staying out one of our latest nights in a while (usually its laying star-shaped on the bed doing crosswords and bed at 10pm = we're getting OLD) we tucked in around midnight (!!) to prepare for the next day. Our first 'real' day at the temples we took a tuk-tuk at around 830 am. We explored about half of the 'Grand Circuit' tour (excluding Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom) and saw about 5 or 6 temples, which happened to be some of the smaller ones, but were still giant! We for some reason got pretty tired around noon and decided to call it a day at the park... can't handle those late nights. Coming back into town we had a delicious lunch (MILKSHAKES?) and decided to hit up the Angkor National Museum to learn some things! I am SO glad that we did! We learnt about the symbolism and the stories that we'd be seeing the next day; The Hindu gods Bhrama, Vishnu and Shiva and their reincarnations, tokens, animals and stories... The Buddhist symbols and what some of the different Buddha positions mean (don't quiz me...). Afternoon spent absorbing information was great! We walked back to our hotel and headed out for dinner and to meet up with our friends one more time, as they were headed out of town. Not quite as late of a night though because we had a BIG day ahead of us!! Day number 2 we got up nice and early, found and rented some $1 bikes (with gears!!) and began our journey back to the park. Day 2 was solely dedicated to Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom!! We began with Angkor Wat and it was AMAZING. Over a kilometre per side, its probably about 3-4 square kilometres in size.... everything enclosed within the moat I mean. The temple itself is GIANT - we were there for over 2 hours!! We checked out the outer walls a bit before heading to a lineup to actually go UP the main tower. Once we reached the front of the line and ascended in our rented t-shirts (scarves weren't good enough), we realized how GIANT it actaully is! In photos it looks like 3 towers - one big one in the middle and 2 smaller ones on either side. The truth is there is one big one in the middle surrounded by 4 smaller ones creating a square around the big one! There was a seriously good sized level up there - hallways and courtyards, all intricately carved and decorated! Took a million photos (to come!). Exploring upstairs amidst tons of tour groups was enough... we headed back down to check out the main wall around the temple (not the big wall that goes all the way around, the midway wall!) which we had learned were almost 600m long and showed 'stories' from left to right all along the way. One in particular we wanted to see was 'The Churning of the Ocean of Milk' which is essentially a fight between the demons and the gods that lasted 1000 years, each side trying to attain the Amita (sp?) or elixir of immortality. They used a snake to churn the ocean and there are a bunch of things that came from it... a white elephant, the elixir, a horse, one of the gods etc. The mural is SO LONG. It shows either side pulling on a snake, like a tug of war, with a dancing god in the middle, standing ontop of a turtle (a reincarnation of Vishnu). I KNOW ALL ABOUT IT OF COURSE. Haha but really that's the one in particular we wanted to see! Continuing around the walls we saw murals of heaven, earth and hell, of wars, and of everyday life. So much detail. And its so straight and particular. Don't even know how! Alright sorry for that rant.... moving onto Angkor Thom after a delicious lunch of veggie and meat filled egg pancakes (that you make into lettuce wraps) for only $3.50 (can't you tell I love the food?), we checked out Bayon, the main temple inside Angkor Thom city and the one known for the giant faces!! It was really cool and so different from Angkor Wat!! It was much rounder and had so many different routes rather than so square. At the museum we actually learned that those two - Angkor Wat and Bayon - are classified as two different buildig and decoration styles. Next was a mountain temple (perfect - SWEATING) called Baphuon - it was beside what used to be the little enclosed royal residence back in the day. Hardest thing I've had to climb. World's tiniest and steepest stairs in the heat of the day AND they made us put scarves on. NO. The view from the top was great though!! We appreciated it while melting into pillars. The mountain temples usually have elephant statues at the 4 bottom corners though so that was cool to see too! The back of this particular temple was a giant laying own Buddha... made from the bricks! At first glance it just looks like the wall is gonna collapse but then NO its shaped like a Buddha! Very cool. Moving on to the royal palace and Phimeanakas, another mountain temple. We discovered the royal palace actually isn't there anymore... but its on the map. Wild goose chase. We saw a few more small temples (looked like we were in Temple of Doom) and started our bike journey back!!! Arriving back, we wrote some postcards / journal entries and headed for DINNER! Went for a change and indulged in some MEXICAN! There is EVERY type of food here in Siem Reap... Indian, Western, Thai, French, Sushi, also local of course. Tucked in SUPER EARLY. BECAUSE... we were up at 445 this morning! We dragged our butts out of bed nice and early to go check out sunrise at Angkor Wat! GOTTA do it. Weather turned out perfect - cloudy and cool(er) for our exploration days, and sunny for sunrise day!! So great! Arriving at the park at 530am, we walked into the outside wall of Angkor Wat to see the sunrise. Finding a spot on some stairs to a smaller temple, we watched the sun come up for about an hour, wandering around for some different views! It was so nice!! Very busy though. Indulging in some expensive $3 pancakes, we fueled up at a stand beside Angkor Wat for some more temple viewing! We saw about 4 more major temples, completing our 3-day 'Grand Circuit' of the park. Compared to yesterday, the temples we saw today were so nice and quiet, tourist wise! This morning we saw Preah Kan, Neak Prean, Ta Som and East Mebon, all North of the main Angkor centres. Finishing our tour at around 1030am, we headed back to town for some lunch with the girl from Denver (who is living here) and some housekeeping before we head back to Bangkok (and then South) tomorrow!! BRAVO if you got through this essay... I felt I had to make up for the shorties I wrote quickly before :) Photos are next!!