Angkor, What?

Today, being my first proper day in Siem Reap, I was up bright eyed and bushy tailed ready for a visit to the Temples of Angkor. The moment you leave the hotel, you are assaulted by a variety of different people wanting to give you a ride on their "moto" which is just a motorbike, or on their "tuk-tuk" - motorbike drawn carriage.

Obviously, seeing a westerner, the locals quickly realise that winning this contract is quite lucrative to them and so there was a lot of competition. I opted for a nice chap called Mr. Son (pronounced See-un) who agreed that for $15 he would be my taxi driver for the day. I have to say, after a day with him, he is a thoroughly nice person, and is very helpful. It is also quite nice that he takes real pride in his town and the temples, telling me, in his broken English, which places are the best to visit at a given time of day.

He was even OK when I had to return back to the hotel to recharge some batteries on my camera. Basically, today has been so hectic, that I have taken over 1,200 photographs and drained both of my cameras batteries (plus filled up 2 memory cards) - sorry, that is all technical guff for those in the know!!Mr. Son and his Tuk-Tuk. Very nice fellow, and extremely helpful.

Today, I have seen Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom (which comprises of several temples in its own right; the Baphoun, the Bayon and Phimeanakas) and also the jungle temple, Ta Prohm (which is the temple used in the film Tomb Raider). This really is just scratching the surface though, as there are literally hundreds of temples all around this area.

Ok, better give some more details of the ones i have visited so far.

Angkor Wat
This is described as the mother of all temples, and they really are not wrong. The scale of it is of epic proportions, and the intricacy of the stone masonry is nothing short of amazing. The moat which surrounds it, which i believe is man made is easily over 100 metres width all around. There is one bridge you have to walk across to get to the outer wall. Once at the outer wall, you then have another kilometre (at least) to get to the temple complex itself. The temple has 5 turrets all of which have seen better days, as the Khmers used a lot of limestone to make their temples, which gets weathered away over time. There is a lot of restoration work going on at all the temples, as they have finally realised that these treasures are a guaranteed source of tourists.
The final approach to Angkor Wat. The journey to get here caused me to drink about 3 bottles of water and i was dripping with sweat by this point, but it really was worth it.

Angkor Thom
This is actually bigger than Angkor Wat. Basically, the Khmer rulers were God Kings to their people, and so each one tried to outdo their predecessors with an even more spectacular temple. Within the perimeter are the Bayon, which is one of the more interesting temples as all of the turrets have strange faces (of the king?) looking down on you. It might possibly be a 4 headed buddha. The Baphoun is similar to a Mayan pyramid and has some seriously steep stairs. Basically the Khmers allow you to walk all over these buildings with little care for the long term damage this does. To people like me this is the equivalent of Alton Towers and i was scrambling all over the rocks snapping away with my camera.

This is a shot of the Bayon temple.
This is the Baphuon. Restoration work is currently underway, hence the large amounts of canvas!

Ta Prohm
This was the most interesting of the temples i saw (after Angkor Wat) as it is a temple that was abandoned and returned to nature. All the trees and roots are now entwined around the stones of the temple in an interesting synergy, contrasting the beauty of man's creation with the beauty of nature (hark at me with the arty farty talk!)
This is the Ta Prohm "money shot", each of the roots on this tree are well over 2 feet wide, to give you a sense of scale.

After that i was fairly exhausted so i have booked in Mr. Son again, and we will head out further afield. I am sure that word has got out that there is an over generous Englishman in town, as it appeared that i had to turn down even more requests for money today than yesterday!!!