Agkor WHAT??????

The day started today with a bright and early 4:30 am wake-up call.  I came damn near close to missing the bus, thank god that Jourdan had them hold it for a minute for me.  We headed straight over to the Angkor Wat complex.   This is a massive collection of ancient city sights and temples (over 300) all within only a few kilometers.

The first stop was the Angkor Wat temple.  This is a monstrous religious compound that used to house a religious city, with the actual temple at the center.  We watched the sunrise from in front of the reflecting pool.  The weather wasn’t great, but it was still beautiful. 

On the way in, I was handed some incents, and did some prayer.  I thought I was being given a light, because it was so dark.  When he asked me for money for the monks, I realized I was duped.  I gave him a dollar and walked away, only to realize that for some reason, a good portion of the group followed me, and were all doing the incents prayer.  Many people got taken for way more the a dollar (Emma and Niall).  Oops, my fault.

After the time the sun should have risen, we met our new guide, Borin, and started going through the history of Angkor Wat, and how it was used.  We entered the complex, and finally got a very real ideal of how magnificent and grand this temple is.  The place is HUGE, and looking at it from the front is very deceiving.

As we climbed through different portions of the temple, it was amazing to see the ornate sculptures and the 70 degree sloped staircases, which force you to crawl up in a manner subservient to god.  When Jourdan and I decided to climb a particularly large set of stairs for a photo op it was actually quite scary.  From the top, Jourdan tried to “biff” his jandal at Hoover (biff is Kiwi for throw).  He missed by a long shot, and then Hoover was ready to toss his jandals onto the roof of Angkor Wat.  When she realized it would not be respectful to the site, she turned and biffed them at Jourdan, nailing him in the chest.  It was priceless.

After the jandal biffing incident, we were able to climb to the top of the complex.  It was a great view, and furthered the magnificence of the compound.

We next headed back to the hotel for naps and lunch on Pub Street.  It really is a great area to walk around in. 

In the afternoon, we began the second part of our temple tour, and headed back to the Angkor Wat complex.  We first headed to the ruins of Bay Lon temple, where they have massive tours with four-sided Buddha faces.  The ruins were quite spectacular, and you can tell how expansive this city must have been at one time. 

After Borin gave us a tour of the area, we jumped into tuk-tuks to head to Angkor Tom.  This portion of the complex is itself 9 square kilometers, and it was one of 32 sites within this portion of the larger site.  Along the way, we must have passed at least a dozen smaller ruins of buildings and temples.  A person could truly spend a week in this complex and not see everything.  It is amazing how built up this area was.

Angkor Tom is a temple that was left in the condition it was found it, because it was so overgrown with trees that they were unable to safely clear the area.  It also happens to be the temple where they filmed the Tomb Raider movies.  It was awesome to walk through this overgrown temple, and find surprises around every corner (hidden smiley faces and echo rooms included).

As we headed back to the hotel, we jumped into the pool and started having a pool-pregame with everyone from the tour.  Jourdan jumped into the spa for a head massage, as we started throwing back the drinks. 

They jumped into my picture, so I jumped into theirs

The group headed over to our final nights dinner at 8^th Street Brassiere.  From the parts I remember, it was really good, and we had a lot of laughs.  We all had our “Same Same but Different” tee-shirts, except Jourdan, who made a “Different but Same Same” tee.  We passed them around, and everyone signed each other.

To have a solid final night, we all headed to a bar called Angkor WHAT.  From there, things got silly.  The drinking and dancing was off the hook.  See some funny pics below.