The next stop on the agenda was to see the Ankor Wat temple in Siem Reap.

We heard there were some beautiful beaches off the coast of Cambodia but we only had enough time to just see the temples and killing fields. We figured once we got to Thailand we would have plenty of beach time anyhow.

We were given mixed feedback about the busses in Cambodia but I can’t say we weren’t warned about the bus running between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.

The ride was extremely bumpy the entire way. You would think for the main road through your country you would pave it but I guess they don’t have the money. All the roads were dirt with pot holes everywhere. For a short time not a big deal but a five hour ride.. You can imagine.

Once we arrived in Siem Reap, we got on booking our way to the temples the next day. We met a couple guys to share a tuc tuc with and made plans for our $15 all day personal chauffeur the next day.

For an extra $3 we could go early to see the sun rise at the temples. Seeing that this was our only opportunity to ever do this, may as well suck it up and do it right.

It was cold in the morning in the dark especially with the open transportation. Arriving at the main most famous temple, apparently we weren’t the only ones with this idea.

And boom-here’s the money shot everyone wakes up for:

All the temples were contained within about a 15k walled in area if I remember correctly. One entrance fee of 20 bucks covered entrance to all the temples for a one day pass. There were 3 day and one week passes available too, but I think you would have to really love this stuff to want to explore temples for more than one day. We found we were pretty much done looking at more of the same after about the 3rd temple.

Not that they weren’t impressive they were definitely cool and worth checking out.

Ankor wat consisted of the main building shown in the sunset above plus a few outer buildings of which one was a library.

The photo below will give you an idea of the size of the ruins.

Every part of the temple had very intricate details and it is hard to imagine the man power that went into these things.

On the way out we walked down the center pathway through all the temples that we couldn’t see on the way in because of the darkness.

So this was supposed to be the main attraction. Moving on we proceeded to visit at least 4 more temples. Rather than bore you with all the repetition we experienced I’ll give the highlights.

This one was my favorite temple. It was covered in faces each one of those towers, really cool.

It is worth noting that although I was misinformed I could wear whatever I wanted, I wasn’t able to climb some of the temples since I was wearing a tank top and my shoulders weren’t covered.

The last temple worth mentioning was covered in trees overgrowing it which made for some pretty cool pictures.

What was not cool was the overwhelming amount of Asian tourists taking over the place and making it difficult to walk around.