Cambodia – Angkor Wat

Kampuchea – our next stop in our Asian exploration, and Angkor Wat; reputedly now to be right up there in the “Wonders of the World” (understandably so to us since our visit). This was a whirlwind tour with only 3 days to see so much, but absolutely fabulous, even if exhausting.
The picture is Angkor Wat (the number one temple in the region) taken at sunrise – yes, Trish was out of bed at 5:15 AM to get to the Wat for 6 for this experience. Lovely!
Angkor Wat is actually used to refer to the area around this temple, where there are dozens of (if not more) temples. All are different, representing Hiduism and it’s transition to Buddhism, and various combinations of both, throughout several hundred years around 1000 AD. The Angkor Wat area was the centre of the Indochina region during these times, with Kings here ruling much of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Burma.
We also managed a sunset at Angkor Thom – the number 2 temple in the area. This is me facing up to a 1000 year old “Khmer” – tricky eh?
The town local to Angkor Wat is Siem Reap, where all the tourists stay; Angkor being a protected area with no habitation inside the “park”. Seam Reap is wall to wall building now – mostly hotels, as you can no doubt imagine.
In addition to Angkor Wat we visited a few other temples, and went to a floating vilage. The floating village is some hundreds of floating houses and businesses in what is essentially a small fishing town. The houses contain small farmyards too, with pigs and chickens, as well as fish and crocodile (for export) pens. The lake that this village is on is huge, and fluctuates to up to 4 times its dry season size during the rainy period. It’s interesting to see an engine repair shop with smithy and welding facilities belching smoke in the middle of a lake! We were there for a sunset, so that was extra special in amongst all the other wonders of this water borne community.
On a must see in Asia (maybe the world) scale of 1 to 10, this has to be a 10.


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