Our not so creepy tuktuk driver met us at our hotel in the morning to take us around to as many Angkor temples as we could handle! Our first stop was Angkor Wat..the largest and most famous of the temples. It is the largest religious building in the world. It was surrounded by what we thought was a lake. Turned out it was a huge moat! Kaitie and Caroline were impressed, and now refuse to live anywhere that doesn't involve a huge moat. It was a 3-tiered pyramid temple topped with 5 lotus-like towers. The architecture was unbeleiveable, and it was incredible that it was built in the early 12th century C.E. It was very neat, as it contained lots of long corridors filled with carvings that represented stories of the Hindu religion. The only disappointing part was that in true Kaitie and Caroline style, they were doing some major restoration work, and the main entrance and some other corridors were closed off. It was only 10:30 in the morning, scorching hot (already 33 degrees when we left at 9am), and Kaitie and Caroline had to put their rain coats on (because of their tank tops) and climb the steep stairs in the sun up to the third tier. Surprisingly, we did not pass out. After only an hour, and 1.5 litres of water down, we were off to continue our journey!
Our next stop was Angkor Thom, which was a royal city that had numerous temples and structures within. Our first stop was Bayon, which was the state temple. It is well known as the temple with a bazillion faces that pointed toward the four cardinal points. This was one of our favorites! It had 37 towers, with the majority having these large carved out faces that always seemed to be looking at you! There were 216 of these massive faces! There really appeared to be no method to the madness of the this building. It took over 100 years to build, which is why it seemed so scattered.
One of the largest buildings in Angkor Thom was Baphuon, which unfortuantely is a tad bit scattered at the moment, so you cannot go in to see it. It is known as the most ambition restoration project in Angkor as it looks like a giant jigsaw puzzle they are trying to put together with no instructions. All we have to say to them is good luck! Also in Angkor Thom was the Terrace of Elephants, which had a 300 meter long wall with elephants carved into it, and the Terrance of the Leper King (not as cool as elephants).
Our final stop in this royal city was Ta Keo. This is a massive pyramid rising more than 50 meters high, and was never fully completed. We renamed it, the Pyramid of Death. We were certain this temple would be the end of our journey. The so called stairs up the pyramid have long ago eroded into teensy thin ledges in which you have to scale up like a steep ladder. Thought process: "Oh yea...we can climb up this..we're super cool!!!" ..."Oh Shit....how are we gonna get back down?!?!" (Note by this point we were already to far up to turn back). Figuring we would probably die anyways, we decided to keep climbing even further up to the very top, if we were gonna die, may as well have a nice view! As you have probably already figured out, we did not die. But the treck back down made us wish we had packed some big girl diapers! It was time to move on!
Next stop, Ta Prohm, aka Tomb Raider temple! This temple was very jungle-esque as there were massive fig and silk cotton trees trying to eat the temple! The jungle had totally overgrown parts of the temple, making it look like ancient ruins. Kaitie and Caroline were convinced that these were not just ANY trees, but Ents from Lord of the Rings! They looked as though they were just sitting on the walls of the temple. We were sure they would have made contact with us if there weren't so many people around.. Merry and Pippin ain't got nothing on us!! Being this was the site of Tomb Raider we felt it was appropriate to reinact some of the battle scenes. The locals as well as the crowds of other tourists found this quite entertaining as they took nice pictures while kaitie and Caroline took pictures of themselves trying to kick the crap out of each other. Classy we know! One tour guide called us "Angleina and Brad".......Kaitie was Brad LOL But we all know neither Kaitie nor Caroline could pull of that skin tight booty short outfit that Angelina wore in the film and we weren't going to try!
Our final stop of the day for temples was Preah Khan. This temple was well set into the jungle as well with mazes of vaulted corridors with the most carvings than any other temple we had been to that day. Some of these crazy corridors had carvings that made the walls look like doors straight out of Rivendell "Elf Town" from Lord of the Rings! We spoke friend in elf language but none of them opened. Again we think that is just because there were other people around who were not welcome!
In our temple excursions we thought we should get some souvenirs. Lets just say Kaitie and Caroline are MORONS. We still only have our backpacks but thought it would be a good idea to invest in many paintings (including some that have wooden frames) and rubbings of the temples! Where the hell do you put that in your backpack that is already full. Lets just say some clothes did not make it to our next destination and is now currently in the mail heading back to the homeland. We will see who will make it back to Canada first. Kaitie and Caroline or mail from India!
Another Wonder of the World knocked off our list successfully!
