Siem Reap, Cambodia Day 88
We booked Kedi for an 8am pickup but didn’t finish brekkie until 8.30am – today we are off to the Temples.
What an amazing place – first stop Angkor Wat. The ruins date back to the early 12th century (between 1113 and 1150) and it is the worlds largest religious monument. The site covers 200 hectares – a rectangle 1.5km x 1.3km. The moat that surrounds the city is 190m wide, the scale of this place is massive!!! The bas-reliefs are one of the most famous creations in Khmer art, they are in the gallery that surrounds the main area. The carved area is about 600m in length and stands 2m high. The carvings depict battles fought, Heaven and Hell and many other scenes of the time, they are very detailed.
The next area we visited was Angkor Thom which was one of the largest cities built in the area – 9km square. This area was all about faces and elephants. Bayon at the centre was one of our favourites, there is said to be 200 faces sculpted in stone around the site. Our trip around Angkor Thom was hindered a little as a young monk (fake) lead us up the garden path (so to speak) so we did miss some of the more interesting areas! From what I can remember we saw Bapuon, which was covered with scaffolding as it is being resorted so we could not enter, Tep Pranam (large seated Buddha), Preah Palilay (small chimney like). After walking around these for a couple of hours we had lunch then went on to Banteay Kdei and Ta Prohm.
Ta Prohm was not as mind blowing as what we thought it was going to be, there are some very good photographers out there! After this temple we had both had enough as the day was very hot so we called it quits for the day and headed back to Rosy’s.