Why, Angkor Wat of course. We took a side trip to Cambodia on vacation to visit the Temples at Angkor. It’s actually a huge site with a whole bunch of different temples, the most famous of which being the biggest: Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is thought to be the largest religious structure in the world. How about them apples Jesus? (For the record, it’s OK for me to say that because I’m Catholic. It’s like black people calling each other… Ahem. moving on.)
Anyways I can’t sleep because I’m so effing jet-lagged so I thought I’d share some pictures. It was amazing to see. Well worth the 1 hour flight and 5 hour bus ride from Bangkok.
The Cambodian people made me want to run screaming back to Thailand, but it was worth it to see the temples. They were the pushiest damn beggars, peddlers, and tuk-tuk drivers I’ve ever encountered. Swarming around your tuktuk before it’s even stopped, following you through temples trying to get you to buy their junk, begging for money while you eat your lunch near the street in a restaurant, hassling you to take their tuktuk before you’ve even paid the bill. But I can’t really blame them. They’re poorer than poor with no real opportunities so they’ve got to do what they’ve got to do. The real sad ones were the land mind survivor bands, which were a bunch of guys missing limbs playing for spare change. Made me appreciate home. Besides it’s probably only like that in the cities, where the poor are desperate and the tourists have money.
On to the pics! (If photobucket’s blocked you’re SOL. I tried doing the usual file attachment thing but as always the “updates” suck so bad it’s unusable.)
Angkor Wat at sunrise
Lots of tourists with the same idea
The crowd grows…
Might as well eat the egg sammich the guesthouse packed for me. (Excuse me for looking 12. A fresh shave and lack of hair stuff does that to me. I’m actually 16.)
Inside the outer wall
More temple
Man has always liked women with large breasts
More Angkor Wat
Looks like a swimming pool to me
Front Courtyard
Another temple
Happy God/King
Some temple walls covered in elephants
Another temple
Lots of arms. Dat Vishnu?
Intricate Carvings EVERYWHERE
There was no shortage of Buddha’s to pray to, usually with someone eager to give you a lighted incense to do some ritual gesture with followed by a request for a donation. The temples were orginally Hindu but Buddha jacked them somewhere along the line.
Fry doesn’t do 95+ degrees + sun. There was a nice breeze about 20 feet up though.
Another temple. Parts of Tomb Raider was filmed in this one.
Recognize that tree from the movie?
Nature will always find a way.
Another temple.
Lizard.
Monkeys.
The top of a temple seems like a pretty good place to watch the sun set.
You can juuuuust about see the ends of the earth from a tall temple on the edge of a cliff.
A thunderstorm just missed us. Good thing too. The stairs were taller than they were wide. So steep that until you were within about 3 feet of the edge it didn’t look like there were any stairs there. The only thing worse than climbing down stairs that high and steep with a hundred other tourists in the dark, would have been to climb down slippery wet steep stairs in the dark with it raining and windy.
Monks.
Tune in next time for pictures of Monks with Evo III’s in Chiang Mai.
