Our first two full days in Siem Reap were spent wandering the ruins of Angkor, for as long as we could stand the heat. Which was about 6 hours or so. After that we needed to go back to the hotel and swim, as going from 15 to 33 degrees in a day is a real shock to the system.
There are more pictures in the gallery, so I’ll just post the highlights here.
Our first stop was the ancient city of Angkor Thom. We arrived through the south gate, which has a “naga” (7-headed serpent) bridge leading up to it, with gods lining one side and demons lining the other, both carrying a serpent.
The bridge leads to a gate with 3 towers carved with 4 faces (on the cardinal points). At the base are 3-headed elephants plucking lotus flowers with their trunks, forming the supporting pillars.
Inside the city of Angkor Thom are:
The Bayon, with its famous face towers
The Baphuon, a 5-tiered pyramid that is being restored
The Phimeanakas or Royal Palace
The Elephant Terrace
And, of course… monkeys!
After Angkor Thom, we went to Ta Prohm, a temple that was chosen to be left in its ‘natural state’ as an example of how most of Angkor looked on its discovery in the 19th century.
After lunch, we went to Angkor Wat, the most famous of the Angkor temples. It actually has 5 towers (one in the centre and 4 on each corner), although most pictures only show the 3 you can see when you are directly facing the temple. Here, you can see 4 of the towers.
By that point (about 15:30 on a very hot and sunny day), we were done. So, Joey took us back to the hotel, and we swam and relaxed until about 18:30, when he picked us up to go to a restaurant he recommended - the Angkor Mondial Restaurant. It had a buffet of various Cambodian and other SE Asian cuisine, followed by Apsara dancers.
The evening would have been wonderful, had it not been for the large tour group of obnoxious French people (is that an oxymoron?) that arrived extremely late, and then had to mill about while deciding where to sit, get up many times to get food, and stand to take pictures, even though their table was front and centre. Jerks.
The next day we got up early to travel to Banteay Srei, a beautiful out-lying temple. On the way we stopped at Pre Rup.
Banteay Srei is a beautiful little temple made of pink sandstone. It has very detailed carvings over its walls, doorways, and towers, which are still mostly intact.
Sadly, the same group of French jerks showed up with their cloud of smoke (many of them were smoking despite all of the “No Smoking” signs), so we left.
On the drive back to the main temple area, Joey stopped at a friend’s market and showed us how palm sugar is made.
Then, we toured:
East Mebon, with its elephant statues
Ta Som, that has a large strangler fig tree over the east entrance
Neak Pean, with 4 ponds surrounding a central pond and Sanctuary Tower
And finally, Preah Khan, with Dad helping to guard the north entrance
Then, it was time for lunch!
By this point, we were pretty much templed out, so we decided to give Joey the rest of the day off, and just relax in our hotel for the afternoon.
In the evening, we wandered around Siem Reap for a while, and saw a flock of bats (is that what you call a group of bats?) over one of the central gardens. They were everywhere - it was kind of creepy, for no good reason. Stupid Hollywood-esque social conditioning. 
