Siem Reap - Day Two

We started the day with breakfast at the hotel, and then got on the bus for the twenty minute ride to Angkor Wat.  There were a few other people there.

But if we avoided the crowds, we could pretend we had it mostly to ourselves.

There is a man made lake surrounding the temple complex, so first we walked across the bridge.  There are several gates to get to the main green area.  The central one was only for kings and queens, but these days it's the one that most of the tourists go through.  We went through the next door down which was for nobility.  The final door was for commoners or people riding horses or elephants, since there were no steps for the animals to go up. 

After going through the gate, we walked across the large green area looking ahead to the main temple.

Angkor Wat is a Hindu temple, so there were statues and carvings of various Hindu gods and goddesses.  There are also carvings showing various kings and their famous battles.  The engravings were incredibly detailed.

Jeff was a trooper and carried Elena.

He did set her down before climbing to the top though.  She hydrated.

Vivian had to go to the bathroom, so she and I broke off from the main group.  Our tour guide told us where to meet up with them outside one of the other gates.  We found some rocks to sit on in the shade and were just relaxing when Vivian cried out, "Mommy, monkey!"  It took me a second to register that there was a monkey headed our way.

There were a bunch of them, and they were clearly used to tourists giving them food.  We didn't have any food and Vivian was kind of freaked out, so I shooed them away.  One intrepid monkey, hopped onto a nearby tuk tuk that the driver had left unattended and found a water bottle.  Vivian was yelling no, no, no at the monkey, but it wasn't listening to her.  It took the water bottle over to a rock and wrestled with it until it got the top off.  There wasn't much in the bottle, but it was quite a show.

We met up with the rest of our group, watched the monkeys for a while, and then went to get some lunch.  After lunch we drove to Ta Prohm, also known as the jungle temple or the Tomb Raider temple, since that's where the Angelina Jolie movie Tomb Raider was filmed.  It ended up being our favorite temple.  The trees just grow up through the temples, and it's so cool.  Jeff did his usual good job with pictures, but it's impossible to capture the atmosphere.

We had a third temple trip planned, but we decided to save it for day three, since we were all pretty worn out by then.  Instead, we went back to the hotel, lounged at the pool, and had dinner at the restaurant again.