Angkor Temples

Cambodia day 1! Kev and I did a one-day bike tour with Grasshopper today that took us around all three major temples.

Our guide Sambo is Cambodian and super knowledgeable about the temples. Here he is hand-drawing us a map of our route for the day. We did Bayon > Ta Phrom > Angkor Wat. 

We rode along the Siem Reap river and saw a family of water buffalo as they were climbing on shore. We were more impressed with them than they with us. 

The early morning light was delicious at Bayon. We got a couple rare shots without anyone else since we were heading opposite the normal flow. 

There are hundreds of temples in the area, though many of them are piles of sandstone rubble, begging to be climbed. This sign and I were staunch adversaries. I was yelled at more than once by the temple guards to stop acting like one of the monkeys. 

Ta Phrom was for sure my favorite of the big three. It was abandoned several hundred years ago and the trees manifested that destiny in a serious way. 

You might recognize this tree/temple from tomb raider. I did not see the movie so I only recognize it as awesome. The trees are mostly strangler figs and a species I've never heard of called Spunt. I couldn't get over how big the roots are. See human for scale. 

After I took this picture, six other people lined up behind me to take one too. #trendsetter

The last stop in the blazing afternoon sun was Angkor. It is a staggering structure - I can only imagine how the original re-discoverers felt when they happened upon it in the middle of the jungle. 

The temples are hundreds of years old and Cambodia has a habit of changing both kings and dominating deities. As the temples changed hands, they would also change the hands of the carvings from the Buddhist prayer position (often hands in lap in meditation) to the Hindu prayer position (palms together at chest). There's all kinds of evidence of hand-changing on the statutes and carvings throughout the temples. Sometimes they just cut them off entirely. 

I'd also recommend doing some reading on the history before touring. Makes the impact more meaningful, especially if you go without a guide. 

A note on the crowds: the path to Angkor is VERY well-beaten. Here is a two-photo study to illustrate. The first is the picture I took to remember how the temple made me feel. 

The second is what was actually going on around me. 

There were 5M visitors to the temples last year and they're expecting that number to grow to 8M by 2020. If you're considering a visit, come sooner rather than later as it can take some mental focus to not allow the drone of the crowd to drown out the gorgeousness around you. It's absolutely worth the trip.