Our time in Siem Reap was spent over a Saturday/Sunday weekend, which made sense from the class/business perspective because this area is entirely geared towards to tourism. The main sites are the many temples that were constructed during the Khmer/Angkor Empire which ruled from around 800-1400 AD. At it’s height, our guide told us that the temple area had 1,000,000 people living in and around it and was the largest pre-industrial city in the world. At the same time, London had only 30,000 people living in it.
We started our morning by visiting the Angkor Wat temple for sunrise. Then we went to the Angkor Thom temple to see what we began to call “The Smiling Faces” temple. You’ll see why:
Additional pictures from Angkor Thom including the wall artwork that really impressed me as it must have been incredibly difficult to have such extensive details in stone:
After Angkor Thom we went to the Ta Prohm temple, which is apparently famous for being in a Tomb Raider movie, but also awesome to look at just because of the trees growing in the temple. It seems over time, natural ecosystem activities happened where birds/bugs would pollinate as they flew around the area, and some of the trees actually took root and grew right on top of the temple. Ta Prohm just goes to show you that in the end, mother nature will always win.
Additional pictures from Ta Prohm temple:
After Ta Prohm we had lunch and then went back to get the full tour of Angkor Wat, the granddaddy of all of the Angkor temples. Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument in the world (originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu but gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple). Below is a picture of the entrance, which really is first: a 620ft moat, followed by the outer wall (pictured center), followed by the actual temple which is the five towers you can see in the far distance on the right-hand side of the picture.
Below is a closer picture of the actual temple:
Our tour guide told us Angkor Wat took over 500,000 people to construct. It took 35 years to build and the stones that are used were taken from over 60kms away. Also, Angkor Wat is home to the longest continuous historical stone carvings in the world (pictured below). It took us a couple of hours to walk around Angkor Wat, and we probably only actually walked less than half of the entire complex. Overall, it was stunning and really made you wonder how magnificent this site must have been back when it was in prime condition. This was definitely another part of my trip that made me think back to Rome, and specifically the Coliseum.
Additional pictures from Angkor Wat:
After a very busy day 4, we headed back to the hotel and eventually out for the night (it was Saturday after all!) where we visited Siem Reap’s famous “Pub Street” for dinner and drinks.
Once we had had enough adventuring, we went back to our hotel for the night and woke up to Day 5, a very easy and relaxing Sunday. Click here to continue to day 5.