We just followed some other people with torches and assumed we were going the right way. The sun rose behind Angkor Wat as we watched, it was nice but nothing stunning. Afterwards we had a walk around the temple itself. This is a massive temple in incredibly good condition and there's loads to see -- almost every stone surface has some sort of carving on it. We climbed up the very steep and deep steps to the top of the temple. I was fine going up, but as soon as I got to the top and turned around, I literally got the fear. Started shaking and feeling sick and had no idea how I was going to get back down. Thankfully one set of steps has had a rail added so while Matt practically skipped down (show-off!) I clung to the rail and took about 10 mins to get to the bottom. Pathetic!
After Angkor Wat (and it felt like it should be around midday even though it was only about 8am - and it was warm enough to be midday too!) we headed to the ancient city of Angkor Thom and the temple of Bayon. This temple has 54 towers, on which are more than 200 massive faces. This is another big temple and we probably spent another hour wandering around it. Then it was time for breakfast.
After breakfast, the tuk tuk driver dropped us at the North Gate of Angkor Thom and we walked back to the centre, passing the Terrace of the Leper King, the Terrace of the elephants, Baphuon and Phimeanakas. The terraces are platforms which are elaborately decorated with carvings of elephants, tigers, lions, snakes and fish, just to name a few. Baphuon and Phimeanakas are relatively small temples, both of which are being restored at the moment. It wasn't even lunchtime but it had already been a long day and the sun was splitting the stones. We were making great progress though having seen all of the inner temples, and thankfully the crowds weren't anything like they had been the night before at Phnom Bakheng.
We decided to visit one more temple before lunch and the driver recommended Ta Prohm, another spectacular temple which has been made famous by the fact that a scene from Tomb Raider was filmed here.
What's unusual about this temple is that the jungle hasn't been completely cut back, and some of the stone structures have massives tree roots growing around them. This temple is a bit of a maze and it's difficult to make your way around it. Unfortunately I managed to lose Matt (or he managed to lose me) so spent a lot of the time looking for him. It was also incredibly hot at this stage so I'm not sure I saw all of what Ta Prohm as to offer. I made my way to the Tuk tuk and thankfully spotted Matt a few minutes later.
Then it was finally time for lunch. The driver took us to a restaurant overlooking Srah Srang, a giant reservoir. I was getting extremely tired at this stage, and after I had eaten I put my head down on the table and actually fell asleep for 10 minutes. While I was sleeping Matt read the guidebook and discovered that there's a third level at Bayon which we completely missed. Doh! We decided to head back there later on in the afternoon, but first we went to see a couple of more temples, Banteay Kdei and Ta Keo. Banteay Kdei was used as a Buddhist monastic complex until
the 20th century so it is less over grown than some of the other temples. I was fascinated to see some buffalo swimming in the nearby water. Ta Keo is another temples with lots of steep steps and once again I was pretty scared but I'm improving. Was still like a granny getting down them though.After that we headed back to Bayon to see the third level....well worth the trip back...you come face-to-face with the massive faces. Then we decided to head back to Angkor Wat for sunset. Unfortunately it was quite cloudly so we couldn't see the sunset, but at least we got a couple of nice photos over the moat at the front. The temple looks a completely different colour in the evening light to what it does in the morning.
We were wrecked tired in the evening and it wasn't a good time to get completely lost looking for the Dead Fish restaurant. The food was lovely but we were both completely exhausted after an extremely long but very enjoyable day.
