We had more time temple gazing outlined for the day, but thankfully were leaving at the more humane hour of 7.30am. We had saved the city of Angkor Thom for today. All that remains of this city which once homed a million people are the religious buildings, the viewing terrace for the Royal family for ceremonies, the Royal family cremation ground and the impressive city gates. As our tuk tuk passed through the gate I could see rows of stone buddahs lining either side of the bridge and above the stone archway a huge engraved face, slightly weathered over the years, staring down at us. Once inside the old city walls we made our way towards the first temple known as 'Bayon'. Amongst the trees alongside the dusty road we could see tourists riding in on elephants with brightly coloured maroon and yellow robes around the constructed seat on top. It helped create a picture in one's mind of how this old city must have looked in its hey day with processions put on for the royals.

Bayon was equally impressive and thankfully not overly crowded with tourists at the early hour we arrived. It meant Scott ad I could explore the temple in relative peace which was quite exciting as much of it still stood, be it in a slightly derelict, tumble down fashion. We were able to explore ancient corridors and find ourselves I hidden courtyards, and then deeper into the depths of the central temple where the corridor opened out around a central stupa surrounded by pillars. I liked to imagine monks walking these corridors many moons ago. The temple was impressive in height as well with several levels going up to create the effect of a mountain. Indeed it was originally built to resemble Mt Meru near to the city. At every angle looking up you could see more huge stone faces staring down at you, exactly like those at the gates. Bayon is also famous for its impressive bas carvings along the outer walls depicting scenes from everyday life in Khmer culture; although I have to say I was slightly more impressed with the carvings we saw later at the Terrace of the Leper King (the cremation ground) where a narrow hidden alley had been protected from the elements and showed beautifully preserved images of women wearing multiple strings of pearls and warriors yielding double edged swords.

The second temple we looked at was called Baphuon and had a majestic walkway between two small lakes leading up to the entrance. The temple was very high and we had to get up 2 very steep sets of stairs (almost that of a ladder it was so steep!) to reach the top. We were amused to listen to the protests of two young American girls who were not allowed in as they were showing too much flesh . We heard them exclaiming in strong American drawl - 'This is ridiculous'. Scott shot them down with 'This is a temple you know - and you've got to respect the culture. We're not in America now.' The girls claimed no knowledge of it being a religious building! What did they think they we coming to see! The sad story of the Baphuon is that archaeologists in the 1950's started taking it apart and labelling every stone so it could be reconstructed with the remaining stones strewn in the forest around it. They kept detailed records but unfortunately these were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge and it has been a long and painstaking process trying to reconstruct it as accurately as possible.

We remained at the ruins until about 11.30am and then made our way back to Siem Reap. We had an afternoon relaxing back at the hotel as I had a splitting headache and am pretty sure I'd overdone it on sunshine in the last couple of days. At about 4.30pm we headed back out as Scott was keen for some more water torture in the form of a fish massage! Not for me - I'm far too ticklish and opted for a more relaxing pedicure instead. We went to a street side BBQ for dinner and had a tasty whole red snapper each barbequed to perfection.