We got our bill at the restaurant, $12 for the 4 of us to eat and have 2 beers a piece. We then moved on to another bar with $0.50 beer, and sat there at a table out on the street for a few hours. Phillipe had to go home half way because all the techno was 'driving him crazy', but the rest of us stayed till 1am. We got the bill, and it was $14.50 for our 29 beers (aka about the price of 3 beers at home)!
The next morning dawned way too early, with a trip to Angkor Wat in store. I had to throw up, but afterwards felt a lot better, and managed to choke down a slice of plain toast and some coffee before meeting for the bus. It was also the hottest day we've had, I think pushing 40 around midday, and still high 30s at 8am when we set off. The bus was a bit rough, but by the time we got there I had luckily more or less recovered.
There are 94 temples in the Siam Reap region, so obviously we could not visit them all. Today we were going to 3: Angkor Wat, the most famous of the temples, which is on Cambodia's flag, money, and is the largest religious monument in the world, Bayan temple, which largely escaped the destruction caused to the Buddhist statues and reliefs seen at the other temples by Siam (now Thailand) because the statues had 4 heads, and were mistaken for Brahma, the Hindu god, and Ta Prohm, which is famous for the banyan trees growing atop and through the buildings.
Angkor Wat was first. We had a little background from Mony before crossing the bridge over the moat, which is 200m wide. We then had to go through the entrance in the encircling wall, looking at some carvings on our way through, before exiting into a huge garden area, which houses a few smaller buildings as well as the main building. We visited a library (now more or less an empty room) on our way over, mainly to get in the shade for a bit as it was a long walk.
Angkor Wat means 'city temple', and the main building is set over 3 floors, representing hell, Earth, and heaven. It was built by the 7th Khmer king from 1107 to 1150, and as far as I can gather was an active temple for the king. As previously mentioned, it was overrun (along with the whole area) by the Siamese at some point later, and they destroyed all the Buddhist statues.
The first layer has reliefs depicting various myths, and actual battles in which the Khmer were victorious. This layer is the biggest, so the total length of these stretches into the kilometre range. Mony explained a couple to us, and most of them had one army on one side (gods vs demons, 2 brothers fighting over a girl, Khmer vs Siamese), and one army on the other, with some fighting in the middle. There were some which had depictions of everyday life too though, and the gods vs demons one they were pulling a snake for some reason, and Vishnu was in the middle. I have no idea why.
Mony knows all the best photo places, so those of our group who had wisely stuck with him (some decided to go it alone) got taken back out of the first layer to the far side, where you can get the best triple tower shots, and the riff Taff don't know about it so it is quiet. The only problem was the gangs of vicious, bloodthirsty monsters roaming the area. That is right, there are monkeys here! (For those who don't know, monkeys are terrible people. If you don't believe me, visit the monkey forest/temple in Ubud, Bali. You will see what I mean)
I call this one the Mony shot
The second layer had a lot more photo opportunities, and lots of headless Buddhas. We did a full circuit, and Mony explained to us that we could queue if we wanted to go up to the third layer, but there isn't a lot to see, and the queue was way long, so nobody went for it. We are coming back for sunrise tomorrow anyway so there might be a chance then. Mony also showed is an echo chamber, a room with strange acoustic properties that means a clap (for instance) will not echo, but if you put your back to the wall, and thump your chest, it echoes like crazy. People used the room for praying.
All this took a good couple of hours, and it was time to move on, so we went back to the bus and got going. We saw a lot of the temples we couldn't visit as we drove the 5-10 minutes to Bayan, through Angkor Thom, the now ruined capital city of the Khmer. The whole area is walled, and we stopped by the Victory gate for some photos, since it was pretty impressive.
Bayan is in a similar state of repair to Angkor Wat, which is to say pretty good, and as I already mentioned, this time all the Buddhas are in tact thanks to them having 4 heads. This is therefore the defining feature of this temple, especially since there are so damn many heads on the sides of the buildings. I am 90% sure this one had 2 floors of no especial consequence, certainly we only went on 2, and I didn't see stairs up.
We pottered around the bottom a bit, looking at some more reliefs with Mony explaining, and he also took us to a secret well, which was through some dark, twisty corridors which would not be easily navigable without a guide, especially since the well itself is in an alcove and pitch black. It was upstairs then, for a boatload of Mony approved photos. There was an inside section with a hole in the roof, which made for some good photos, especially since there were translucent bats fluttering around up there.
We stopped at a nearby cafe (with god tier air conditioning) for lunch, and I had the quintessential Cambodian dish amok, which is like a mix between Thai green curry and satay. This was actually the second time I had it, and it was a lot less nutty than the first, which was somewhat disappointing, although this also made it lighter, which was probably a good thing.
We then moved on to my favourite temple of the day, Ta Prohm. Apparently part of this place was used in the tomb raider movie, but since that was a mediocre film which came out years ago I don't remember it. It certainly felt like some kind of lost ruin, what with all the jungle surrounding it, and the trees taking the place over.
It was more or less a one story affair the whole way, with a lot of places cordoned off for restoration. Mony had us covered for photos once again, and though there wasn't a lot of carving, and hence a lot less of a story here, there was one notable room which was studded with thousands of giant (like inch diameter) pearls, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds along with ~500 kilos of gold and ~500 kilos of silver. Funnily enough the Siamese weren't shy about taking all of this, leaving behind a room with a wall full of holes.
It was about 4pm when we got done. Given we had to be up in 12 hours, some rest was in order!
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