Angkor Wat

Our second week in Cambodia sent us traveling the countryside. The first place we visited was Siem Reap. It is in the northern part of Cambodia and is the host city to the Angkor Wat temple.  

Angkor Wat is an absolutely amazing site. It is surrounded by water and the actual temple is made of enormous stones. The site was completed sometime in the 1100’s. It has not been used as a temple in hundreds of years. As you walk across a huge stone bridge, an enormous outer wall that is approximately 15 feet tall greets you. Think about being the guy in charge of putting the last stone on top. Hey, you, put that several hundred pound stone up there on top of that several hundred pound stone that is 12 feet up. Have fun! 

There is approximately 400 yards between the outer wall and the temple. The walk to the temple is amazing. There are smaller temples on either side of the stone bridge and amazing places to take award-winning photos. The temple itself is in the shape of a square with several towers. As you enter, there are giant, ornate statues and buddha images. In one hallway, all the heads have been taken off the statues. No one seemed to know why the heads were only gone in this hallway. The main tower was on top of hundreds of stairs. The staircases are not like the ones in America. They were possibly 5 inches wide and each step was around 10 inches tall. Extremely steep! It is no wonder the monks were in such great shape after walking up those stairs all the time.

As we left Angkor Wat, the little monkeys began to walk out. But more on that in a few minutes…

 We left Angkor Wat (easily the most famous of the temples), and headed over to Angkor Thom. This temple was built within 100 years after Angkor Wat was finished. There is no outer wall and it is not nearly as big, but it is much more ornate. There are faces carved into the stone and towers over little buddha temples that are almost 80 feet tall. It is so impressive!

The fun part of the day was the ride back to Siem Reap. Eric had the awesome idea of purchasing the bananas from a fruit guy. On the way back, we saw little monkeys everywhere! They were running about just waiting for someone to give them food. Josh was the first one to give them food. He found out quickly that these little guys are very aggressive. We heard a story that one of the monkeys had scratched and bitten people before, taking chunks of flesh off people! Maybe not chunks, but definitely taking good bites of people. That explains the sheer face of terror that Josh has when the monkey jumped on his head! We stopped the tuk tuk and the monkeys climbed in and all over us to get whatever food we had. The monkey that ended up on Josh’s head was hungry and we were out of food. Don’t worry, he did not take a bite out of Josh (although that would have been funny). We were finally out of food for the monkeys (I am pretty sure we fed them all) and head back to the guesthouse for the night. 

It was a great time!