Eliza, Lily, Alaina and I went to Cambodia for Thanksgiving. We have a friend from Union who gradutated 2 years ago and now is working for an NGO in Siem Reap. And we wanted to see Angkor Wat.
Thanksgiving day, we flew in and so got to have a veritable feast of Khmer food for our Thanksgiving dinner. We had amok, and lok lak, and curry and this traditional Khmer soup. Everything was amazing! Then the next day we got up really early to watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat. The hotel we stayed at, Encore Angkor, was so fantastic and they arranged a car for us. Our driver was the greatest ever! We didn't have a solid idea of which temples we wanted to see each day and he suggested really great itineraries and was funny and helped us find places for lunch when we said we wanted to eat traditional Khmer foods.
So after we saw the sun rise, we had breakfast. Then went out the the temples. Bayon, Bapuon, Elephant Terrace, Leper King Terrace, Royal Palace (all these are actually part of Angkor Thom), Ta Keo, and Ta Prohm. We ate lunch, then saw Angkor Wat. Day two we saw: Banteay Srei, East Mebon, Neak Pean, and Preah Khan.
I liked Angkor Wat, of course. The bas-reliefs were everything they have been made out to be. My favorite part of this temple though was much more obscure. We had bought a guide book for the temples which told us about this apsara statue which was smiling so that you could see her teeth. She is the only one of 2,000 apsaras at Angkor Wat which smiles like this. And we found her. I was very proud of us.
Ta Prohm was also cool; this temple was featured in Tomb Raider when Angelina Jolie sees the little girl by the tree with jasmine and then runs through the door, before shooting up the place and fighting the stone monsters. We saw the tree and door where that scene was filmed. We were going to recreate the whole scene in still pictures but then the inside of the temple in the movie was not really at Ta Prohm.
My favorite temple of them all was Bayon. This temple had fewer paths and such; you can just climb all over it. Awesome.
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