Angkor Wat - Day One

After I arrived in Siem Reap Yoshimi and I headed quickly out to the Angkor Wat temple complex to make the most of her two days in town before she had to head home.

The temple complex is enormous and given our short time frame there we opted to have Mr. Hun take us around for the day in his tuk-tuk rather than do the 7 km bike ride from Siem Reap. This is a tuk-tuk.
















Angkor means "Capital City" or "Holy City" and wat is the word for temple in Cambodia (and Thailand). The main temple in the pics below was built in the early-mid 12th century. Angkor Wat was packed with people on the day we went but was still impressive and beautiful. Unlike other such tourist attractions you can go just about anywhere in the temple area, up incredibly steep stairs, into dark vast chambers. Perhaps it is the coolness of the stone despite the blazing heat or the scents and streams of incense that follow you around the ancient structure but you really can feel the passage of time in this place.

I often found myself pondering, what must it have been like for a normal villager to visit such an immense temple complex, something akin to the Eiffel Tower or Empire State Building to our modern generation. It must have been so awe inspiring and even more beautiful in its original form.

It is hard to get a sense of the scale of this place but here is the approach from the main entrance.
















This is me after scaling some steep, narrow stairs.





















This is one of my favorite shots. The detail of the carvings are so intricate here.