Traipsing through temples and time

After a long day of border crossing madness from Thailand to Cambodia, we arrived in Siem Reap. Here we found a well manicured town set up for tourists to explore the timeless beauty of the temples at Angkor. Discovering the wats was made easy in our chariot, but instead of a horse, it was a motorbike drawn chariot!

 Despite the hundreds of thousands of tourists passing through its walls a day, Angkor is just as impressive, mysterious, and breathtaking as you would imagine. The Angkor tickets are for 1 day, 3 days, or a week of temple viewing, which is definitely possible with so many wats to wander. There are 3 basic tours taken by bicycle (you'd have to be mad to bike all day in that heat!), motorbike, tuk tuk, or car. We did the small circuit one day and the grand tour the second day by tuk tuk. This way we covered alot of ground in 2 days, leisurely discovering Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Preah Khan, Bayon, Pre Rup, and many more. Here is a small sample of our hundreds of photos from our wat wanderings!  

 
Of course, Laura was at it again with her creeping skills. Stalking some monks instead of geishas this time.

We did a lot of climbing to get the best views.

 The temples were covered in such intricate details and stone sculptures.

 Including very life-like elephant and lioness sculptures!

It was amazing to walk among such old historical ruins crumbling all around us, with huge tree roots and jungle reclaiming the land.

 I even found time to sweep. You have no idea how dirty those old temples have gotten!

At the end of our two days we decided to grab a couple souvenir trophies that were just laying around.