Exploring Angkor Wat

The next day the rain stayed with us in the morning, but by the afternoon the sun was out and shining. Unfortunately our pictures don't completely capture how amazing the temples at Angkor really are. We had a great time exploring the 400-square kilometer archaeological site. WARNING: The next paragraph explains history so if that bores you skip it.

For those of you that aren't that familiar with Angkor it is a site (located in northwestern Cambodia) where Khmer kings established their capital from the ninth to the twelfth century. You can see over 100 temples here. Up until the 12th century Khmer kings were Hindu, then at the end of the 12th century a Buddhist king built a number of temple complexes on the site. Angkor has a mix of Hindu and Buddhism all throughout the site. The main temple Angkor Wat was built for Vishnu, a Hindu god believed to be the preserver of the universe. Inside the temple are these elaborate bas-reliefs. It is amazing what they could carve out of stone.




At this temple there were faces all over.

Lance loved all the snake sculptures. The body of the snake stretches out over the wall that goes around the temple and the snake's tail curls up at the end.

This was a funny moment. At a few of the Buddhas there would be an old woman that would ask if you wanted them to pray for you to have good luck. They give you incense sticks and have you stand there while they say a prayer. Lance had no idea what was going on, but played along with her. Unfortunately they use this as a way to ask for money from the tourists. I would think it would be bad karma for them to ask money to say a prayer, but what do I know.

Beware of the RAIN

Day 1 of Angkor Wat. We were so excited because we wanted to watch the famous sunset at Angkor Wat. The sky was beautiful and blue so we were expecting a great sunset.

Right before sunset the sky turned dark fast. We thought we had time to take a few more pictures before it started to rain.

WE WERE WRONG!!!!! We got soaked before we even came close to our tuk tuk (motorcycle transportation), but it was still a great introduction to Angkor Wat.

The Golden Temple Villa

While we were in Cambodia we stayed at the Golden Temple Villa. 15 USD for a great room, tv, air con, internet, tea & coffee, and all the bananas you can eat.

I definitely took advantage of the free bananas! Plus they were those short, fat bananas that taste so sweet. I love them.

We thought this sign was pretty funny. I was so shocked I couldn't bring my hand grenades inside.

Entering Cambodia

Saturday morning we woke up super early to catch the 5:00am bus to the Thailand/Cambodia border. It was a pretty nice drive on paved roads and great scenery. We got to the border by 9:00am to find no more paved roads and lots and lots of mud! First impressions of Cambodia...... muddy, muddy, dirty, poor, and did I mention muddy? But as the day went on we fell in love with Cambodia. It is such a neat place.

We took a taxi to Siem Reap where we would be staying and where the famous Angkor Wat is located. The road from the border to the city wasn't paved and had a ton of pot holes. It started raining a little bit and our car got stuck three times before we made it to the city. It was quite the adventure. We saw a lot of fun things on our drive. One of our favorites was motorcycles carrying pigs. The picture above was taken at one of the best parts of the road, unfortunately we didn't get a picture of some of the bigger pigs. We saw the biggest pigs we've ever seen. Some of the motorcycles carried these big baskets with lots of tiny live piglets all crammed together.

This is our taxi once we arrived at our hotel. It was quite the ride.

Kingdom of Thailand

Well we don't want to overload you with pictures and a lengthy travel log, so this will be the first of posts with what we have been up to the last three weeks. On May 3rd we left for Bangkok on a flight operated by All Nippon Airways. We thought the flight would be long and uncomfortable, but ANA took care of us. This is a picture of Lance with his remote control that allowed us to choose any movie, game, tv show, etc that we wanted to occupy our time. I'm pretty sure Lance spent all 18 hours playing video games.

We arrived in Bangkok pretty late on May 4th. We had some friends that were on the same flight as us so we shared a taxi to a hotel. Our taxi driver dropped us off at the front of the street which the hotel was on. As we were walking to the hotel Lance opted to take the street, while I was walking on the sidewalk. All of a sudden I heard Lance scream like a girl. I've never heard him scream like that before. When I asked him what happened, he said that a thai girl had grabbed his arm and startled him. After we dropped our stuff off at the hotel we walked the streets to find something to eat. As we passed the girl that had grabbed Lance's arm he pointed her out to me. Our friend Levi was with us and when Lance pointed the girl out Levi and I both started laughing. We informed Lance that she was no she, but one of the many lady boys of Thailand. So Lance's first experience with Thailand wasn't so pleasant.

In the morning we took off to tour Bangkok. We went to see the Grand Palace, Wat Po (reclining buddha), Wat Arun, and many other fun interesting places in Bangkok. Here are a few pictures from our day.

That night we went to a market to shop around and then went to a thai kickboxing match. We had a great time. One of the ticket sellers gave us a great deal because I had worked in Thailand before. We got ring side tickets and were able to watch ten matches. Of coarse Lance's favorite match was the bloodiest one and my favorite wasn't even a real match at all. My favorite match to watch was a staged match to show the techniques of ancient thai kickboxing. It was almost like watching a dance. We had a great day!