Checking off one of the Seven Wonders - Angkor Wat

Look where we are!!

Let's just start by saying that this place was incredible!  There is no doubt it is one of the seven wonders of the world. Built in the 9th century, it is the oldest and biggest temple complex in the whole world and it was awesome!

We were staying in a guesthouse on the edge of town, so we rented bicycles for the day to go see Angkor Wat. There are actually hundreds of temples in the area, but most of the more impressive ones are all clustered together in the same area, which makes it nice for us tourists. Angkor and the next famous one down the list, Bayon, were near each other, so it made for a fun day of bike riding.

This was our ride most of the day - a nice cool tree-lined road

The B-man with Mel in the background

Angkor Wat is surrounded by a moat on all four sides, so there's an enormous causeway you have to walk across to get to the temple. Even from so far away, it was so tall and huge in the distance! Such an impressive sight.

Once inside the outer walls, there was the main temple which was 3 stories high, and some smaller outlying temples on the grounds. Get ready for some picture overload!

One of the smaller buildings on the ground

These were some carved reliefs in the stone walls that went all the way around the first level

The climb up to the top level - eeesh!

View from the top. Look how jungle-y!

They had Buddhas in most of the nooks and crannies

View of the main gate

Cool carvings on the overhangs

Another Buddha in another nook

Going up is difficult, but going down is SCARY!

Brannan and some dancing babes

View of the moat from the outside wall

Some local kids playing in the pond... Kids, LOOK! It's Angkor Wat!

Enjoying some pineapple on a stick. Just so you know, it's amazing in this part of the world!

The kid in red just makes me laugh in this picture

Brannan and the naga at the front entrance

After being wowed by Angkor for a couple hours, we headed on down the road to see Bayon. This was the view as we entered the front gate

There's a big face above that front gate, and statues lining the street on both sides

Here's a better look at the statues along the sides

Can you imagine coming here, back in the glory days of these temples?! This would certainly be an impressive sight to visitors, and very intimidating!! Instead of a moat here, the complex is surrounded by walls and four gates like this one.

Once inside, we made our way to Bayon, which was very cool in it's own way

There were faces all over the place, like the one over the front gate.

Cheese! From all four of us!

What a massive place compared to little Melanie!

 One interesting thing was that the temples are built from individual blocks and most of the temples have parts that have fallen down and were put back together. So what you get is a wall that has a picture carved into it, but half of the blocks are eroded from lying on the ground in a pile, so the picture looks like a crazy puzzle when they put it back together. 

Hmmm I could totally do this puzzle

"Uhh boss - we have some extra pieces." 
"That's okay, just make a wall over there with them."
And they did.

This guy is mowing the lawn with a machete. I'm not kidding.

A Buddha watching over things

More faces in the tower

Cool place!

To finish our bike ride, we rode a little further down the road to see one last temple, and some palace ruins. I don't remember the names of any of the other temples we saw, but of course they were awesome.

This temple appeared to be closed, which was okay by us on a hot day, so we didn't go inside. Our guide book said that this temple was actually dismantled (?) at one point, and then there was a war and the plans got lost so they didn't know how to put it back together!  But eventually they either figured it out, or made it up completely, because last year it was complete and open again to the public. I wonder how much of what we see today even looks anything like what it did before... either way, it's pretty impressive!

Notice all the extra pieces lying on the ground!

The next day we hired a tuk-tuk for the day to take us around to see some more temples. He would drive us from one to the next and wait for us (or disappear for lunch) while we went inside and walked around. I think we saw 6 more temples that day, all very impressive and only 2 of them were similar. Of course I can't remember any of their names, but here are some pictures

Looks like Indiana Jones is going to come running out of there

Brannan conquering the mighty wall

This temple was just one, long, enormous hallway

Helping to straighten up the place

This crazy tree had grown  through the temple and crumbled it

We came across elephant rides on the side of the road! Don't worry, we'll be doing this later

The next temple we saw was very mystical. It was built on a man-made island in the middle of a lake. The monks would come here for solitude, and it was very peaceful there. The water was high, so we couldn't actually walk out to the temple in the middle, but you can see the gate on the other side of the water in the pictures.

The walk across the lake to the temple

The front entrance with the temple's tower behind it

A closer look at the tower. There's a stone horse on the left

The next one we saw was a fairly small one, with a short walk through it to the other side. The highlight was supposed to be the tree growing out of the temple on the other side... but the real highlight turned out to be two little girls selling postcards.

The "highlight"

Okay, it is pretty cool...

There were two small girls with a rehearsed script. "Mister, you want postcard? 10 for 1 dollar." And then they would count to ten in English, Spanish, and French. So cute! But if you said no thanks, they weren't so easily dissuaded.

Here she comes, with her little basket of postcards (*Jaws theme song*)

Hello Mister, you want postcard?

At one point, Brannan took a few steps away from her to take a picture of the tree growing out of the temple, and the girl thwacked him on the arm with a postcard, "Hellooooo MISTER, you want postcard???" 
It was so funny!!

Next we saw two "mountain temples" which appeared to be just that. They were super tall, with one tower on top for a Buddha statue. I can only assume that monks hiked up those enormous staircases every day to worship.

This is about halfway up the flight of stairs

Practicing the art of statue-ing

Did you NOT read the sign?!

This second mountain temple had elephant statues all around it. We called him Herman.

The last one we saw was our favorite. It was so Indiana Jones! Very jungular with vines and trees growing out of the walls everywhere.

The tree is thiiiiis big!

This guy...

This tree was growing on top of a wall!

Here's another one growing out the top

This trip to Angkor Wat was definitely a sight-seeing highlight. It has been about a month since we went to look at anything touristy, so we were ready for something awesome. It did not disappoint!

Our stay in Cambodia was only about a week because there's really nothing else to see there. But if you're going to have one awesome thing to your name, this was a good pick Cambodia!