Angkor Wat

Finally, Angkor Wat.  The motivation for this trip. I booked a sunrise cycling tour with the same company, Grasshopper Adventures.  My guide picked me up at my hotel at some crazy-early hour that I can't even remember now.  Maybe 4:15am? We picked up three other people in a minivan and then drove to the Angkor Archaeological Park gate. We had to stop and each buy our entry passes and then walked in the dark out to this spot for the morning show!

I wish it had been a better show!  Unfortunately, it was overcast that morning with lots of clouds. So it went from being dark and cloudy to being light and cloudy, with no big sunshiny sunrise.  Bummer!  The other bummer is that my camera didn't take great shots in this light.  My phone actually had some really nice pictures on it, but later during this day is when the phone was stolen, so all those pictures were lost.  From here on out, the quality of my pictures goes down.  For the last time, bummer!!

 

There is no overstating the popularity of the sunrise visit - look at the crowds!

Once the sun was fully up, we set out on a tour of Angkor Wat.  A few facts:  Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument in the world. It was built in the 12th century. "Angkor" means city or capital city in the Khmer language and "Wat" means temple. Angkor was the capital of the Khmer empire at the time it was built. It was originally built as a Hindu temple, but has been used as a Buddhist temple since the late 13th century.  

Even though there were tons of people at sunrise, the temple felt surprisingly empty as we wandered around.  It was huge!  We started by wandering the corridors around the outside, that you can see just up the steps behind me in this picture.

Again, some of my best photos of this were lost.  But all along this gallery were intricate carved reliefs on the walls and every column had detailed carvings etched into them.  Our guide told us the primary stone was sandstone.  

The outer galleries surrounded this green space which then surrounds the central temple mount.  This is the part with the "corn cobs" on the top that you see in pictures.  

This is a good look at a carving of Apsara dancers.  Apsara is a traditional Khmer style of dancing. I went to dinner at a restaurant in Phnom Penh one night just to see the Apsara dancers.  No photos were allowed!

One of the central temple towers...

View from the top level of the temple...

We had to climb up these stairs to get there.  They were just as steep as they look! Our guide told us the stairs have only been there a few years.  Before that, tourists just had to climb the stone stairs which were ridiculously steep - FAR worse than the wooden steps.  They built these wooden stairs after a couple of people had serious accidents climbing it!

Going up to the highest temple was one place we were all required to have shoulders covered and wearing conservative shorts, skirts or long pants.