We had quite the day of learning about Cambodian history, their battles between Hindu and Buddhist cultures as well as many other interesting facts. We started out our day with a nice breakfast at the hotel, and then our guides arrived to pick us up. "T" was our English guide, and Kol was our driver. First we needed to head to the temple ticket office to get our passes to tour all of the temples in the area, there was a quite a line-up. Never mind that the road was a two way we just went in the left lane so that we could pass all of the tour busses! There were hundreds of people getting tickets, T told us that an average of 1,000 people per day visit Angkor Wat, but since it is the busy season, it is probably much higher…and it seemed like it! Our passes have our pictures on them so that we can't sell them or give them to others, and they are checked as we enter each new temple.

We started out our temple tour with the largest and most famous, Angkor Wat. It was constructed over the course of about 30 years in the 12th century. We entered through the back entrance not only to avoid the crowds, but also to have the sun at our backs so that our pictures turned out a bit better. We learned a story about how the gods and demons stirred the sea of milk, and this theme was repeated throughout both carvings and architecture all around the different temples. It took us about 2 hours to get through it, being that it is one of the largest in the world. It was already extremely hot, so we were pretty happy to get into Kol's van at the end where he handed us two cold bottles of water and cool clothes to wash our faces with!

After that we headed over to Angkor Thom, a city from long ago. We went to the temple Bayon that is known for having 37 towers, each with four carved faces on them. This was my favorite temple that we visited. The faces are absolutely amazing!

After a quick break for lunch at an "expensive tourist place" which cost $13, we headed out again. We went back to Angkor Thom and headed to Baphuon, a temple that has really just reopened for the public in the past 6 months or so. Apparently the French helped to restore it, and they took most of the stones down and numbered them so they knew how to put it back together - it was crazy! There was a LOT of stairs in this one, very steep and a bit scary! The views from the top were worth it though, you definitely felt like you were in the middle of the jungle.

We then went to North Kleang where there were so many rooms and doorways all in a row it looked a bit like you were looking down a hallway of mirrors! This one was Kevin's favorite because of all the different rooms, and because it was decorated for both religions. It was also a welcome change that there were no huge staircases to climb!

We had originally planned on hiking up one more temple to see the sunset over Angkor Wat, but there is a new rule in place that only 300 people can go up there for the sunset. Being that it was only 3:30 we didn't really want to sit at a high, unshaded temple for the next three hours, so we opted for a few more pictures in front of Angkor, and then we headed back to the hotel for a nice cool shower.

We had asked T where to go for dinner and he had recommended Touich. It was quite delicious, Kevin had a Beef Tenderloin with a great sauce and I had spicy beef with lemongrass. I ordered the Medium spicy and I was still sweating a bit! Nothing like eating a hot and spicy meal when it's still 90+ degrees outside! Regardless, it was delicious and we came back to the hotel to rest up for a big day tomorrow…it starts with a sunrise tour!

Keely