We made our way to Angkor Thom at 8:30am and officially began our Angkor tour. The gates of Angkor Thom was our first glimpse of all that was to come...it was lined with the giant statues with the naga, which is a common sight in Cambodia. Naga is a mythical creature that resembles a snake with its long body and 6 heads! Crazy huh? We continued on, pushing our way through the blazing hot sun, stopping frequently for Vichet to give us some history on what we were viewing. He was kind enough to take pictures of me and Jordan. He actually enjoyed it way too much....he was like a photographer, making us pose and everything. haha. He was funny! I laughed my way through some of those tombs because he was so humorous. We went to Angtor Thom, Bayon and some other ones, I can't remember. (It got confusing to me after a while.)
We stopped for lunch which we were both so ready for! Not because we were starving, but we just wanted to escape from the heat. After that we toured another temple called Ta Prohm, this is where Angelina Jolie filmed Tomb Raiders. (our tour guide saw her while filming it) It had gigantic trees clinging to the walls. I just stared at them forever, I couldn't believe how big those trees were!
A couple more hours had gone by and once again, we needed relief from the sun, so Vichet took us to his little shop in a local market. To our disbelief, Vichet had a wife! (if you can figure out what we mean...and why he is so funny to me! ha.) We got to meet her and his baby (so cute!) as we bought a few things from his shop. While there we got some coffee milk - - which i had seen on menus, but just wasn't sure what it was - - Vichet got it for us and it was so yummy. Pretty much iced coffee with sweet milk. It's my new favorite drink!
We Finally, onto Angkor Wat, which is the most common one that everyone knows about. It was an all day 8 hour tour through the temples. It was really amazing to see, I can't comprehend how all the construction and the little details of each statue was constructed. The walls had carvings that referred to famous stories in Hindu or Buddist. It's hard to believe that all this was built like hundreds of years ago. Of course some of them had been restored, but there was a lot that was original. Personally, I have to say, it was a lot of history stuff that was a little over my head. It was really cool to see all the temples and carvings, but with dripping sweat and sunburn, I had had enough. We had planned to finish our tour with Phnom Bakheng, a temple where most tourist ride elephants to the top and watch the sun set. So I was really wanting to do that, but we felt so misreable in the heat, all we wanted to do was go to our guesthouse and jump into the pool! So, around 4:30, we decided to call it a day...we were pooped!
Back at our guesthouse....awww, the shower had never felt so good. After being lazy, hanging around our patio, we headed down the path to town, for another night in Siem Reap. Dinner was at this really cool restaurant called The Dead Fish Tower. The tables were on all different levels, hanging from the ceiling. Live aspara dancers, which is really popular here. Really beautiful! After dinner we walked to the Angkor Night Market...more of the same bargains, just nicer to walk through at night, breezy and less crowded. We had heard from our tour guide, about a fish pedicure, where you put your feet in water and the fish nibble off all the dead skin. We saw it and figured, hey why not?! So we got a fish pedicure....don't know if our feet are better for it, but it was a cool experience!
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