Day 2: ANGKOR WAT!

Saturday morning I woke up in a panic 5 minutes before we supposed to be leaving for the temples. Somehow my alarm hadn't gone off. I rushed down to have breakfast and ordered french toast. Yippee! it was delicious! (However, I soon learned that everyone that enjoyed this delicious french toast regretted it a few hours later unfortunately.) We finished breakfast and headed in our tuk tuk out to the temple grounds. Now, for those of you not familiar, there are several temple ruins here from the Angkor period back in the 10th-12th centuries, spread out across several miles of land. We began our day at Angkor Wat, the spectacularly world famous temple. It is massive, covering over 500 acres of land, and is wonderfully preserved. My excitement was building up as we approached and began crossing the mote. Several people approached us offering to be our tour guide. But they wanted like $15; way too much! One guy just started following us and telling us random facts and taking pictures for us along the way until we finally agreed to pay him $10 for an hour and a half tour.

Apparently, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge chopped off the heads of all the gods during his rule. Tragic.After about half an hour our tour guide said he had to leave to go to his other job, before we'd even made it to the temple itself! We paid him $6 and he wasn't satisfied with that, but we definitely weren't giving him the full $10 for 1/3 of the time he promised us. Before he left he drew a picture in the sand and told us a bit about the construction of the temple. It was quite fascinating. The temple has 5 spires, and unlike most buildings, it was built from the top down instead of the bottom up. Since it is so tall, it would have been very difficult back then for them to lift the stone up high enough to build the top. So they created a mound and built the top, then shaved away part of the mound to build the second story, and then got rid of the rest of the mound to finish building the bottom. This way the elephants could carry the stones up the mound to the worksite. Very creative! Apparently, no building in Siem Reap can be taller than this temple.

We toured around the temple for awhile and saw a bunch of monkeys and took pictures with some girls dressed up on the grounds as the traditional Apsara dancers.

Then we walked through a few shops and fought off all the hounding vendors and made it back to our tuk tuk. Next we went to the Bayon temple. This one was definitely my favorite temple, with faces carved on all 4 sides of every pillar and tower. It's amazing how well the carvings have been preserved over the years.

We explored a few more small temples, then sat down for lunch. After lunch we went around and explored several more temples. One of my favorite things about exploring the ruins here is that there are very few regulations and for the most part you are allowed to climb around and really explore all the ruins. I loved climbing up and walking around all the ledges and looking out at the spectacular views from up top. Every time we pulled up to a different temple, 5 different little girls were chasing us down and yelling, "Hello lady, you like cold drink?" and trying to sell us little knick knacks. They would literally follow us around the entire temple grounds even if we didn't even look at them the entire time. A cute little boy helped me balance a pile of rocks on one of the temple grounds, so I ended up buying post cards from him. It's really hard for me to turn down a cute kid that is really friendly to me.

I was still waiting to find where the elephants were, but our driver told us they were only around in the morning, so I'd have to wait yet another day until I got to ride an elephant. Sigh. Well I think the heat and all the exploring had completely drained us, because by late afternoon we were exhausted.

I think my Dad and uncles have raised me to be quite the tease. When we'd be walking around and hear crickets chirping, I'd say to my friends, "Mmm doesn't that sound make you hungry?!" haha and later the girls were freaking out as a big cricket crawled in front of us, I picked it up and asked if anyone was hungry. I don't know if they thought it was very funny, but I got a kick out of it, lol.

Later that night we went to a Mexican restaurant downtown. It was surprisingly good, for a Mexican restaurant in Asia that is, ha. After dinner we went back to the Night Market to do some more shopping. But I had my eye on just one thing: A fish massage! They have these fish tanks all over the place with signs saying things like "Please help us feed our fish." and "If our fish don't make you happy, it's free." So apparently you sit with your feet in this fish tank and the fish come eat all the dead skin off your feet. It was HILARIOUS! I don't think I laughed that hard even when Sileap was screaming on the carnival rides. Seriously, it tickled soooo bad! I couldn't stop laughing and screaming. The little kids near me got a kick out of it. They were laughing so hard at me, haha. I wish I had a video of it.

It was quite strange to look down and see about 20 fish biting at your feet, and just sit there and let it happen. After a few minutes though, i actually started to enjoy it and my feet really were soft and smooth afterwards! After that I got an aromatherapy foot scrub and reflexology foot massage for $2. Heavenly. I slept like a rock that night and dreamed about riding an elephant the next morning.