Today we saw all the temples here. It was so hot. I put 55 SPF sunscreen on my face but I think I just sweated it off. Burned a little on my arms and face.
So, Bennett's girlfriend's parents lived in Singapore (or thereabouts in SE Asia) for 5 years, and they knew someone who could give us a nice tour of the temples. Bennett emailed him a few days before and he showed up this morning with a sheet of paper he had printed with "Bennett and Emma" waiting at 8 AM in the lobby are of our hotel. (The lobby area's outside. Everything is open-air except the room itself). The hotel's actually pretty nice compared to the surrounding areas. Nice floor and stairs. Sun Same picked us up in his Toyota Camry with heavenly AC. I swear I'm not obsessed with AC but when I feel sick, it makes me feel better.
He drove us to the place to buy our tickets for the temples. $40 each for 2-3 days. First up was Angkor Wat, pronounced Uncle Wat by Cambodians. It sounds just like that. The kings of Cambodia have flip-flopped between Hindu religion and Buddhism, sometimes believing in both. Angkor Wat was from a Hindu king built to honor Vishnu, the protector. That's why it faces west instead of east like most temples.
The temple itself is pretty big. There's a gate, a moat, two libraries, and the temple. Sun Same dropped us off there to explore for a few hours. Native guys in there will just start walking with you and tell you about the site and ask you for money at the end.
For lunch, we ate at a vendor that Sun Same knew. I had ginger chicken and rice. It was really good, and the best part was surprisingly the onions.
Before we left this first temple, we walked through the line of shops. These Cambodians are way pushier and annoying than the Thai. They walk up and pester you and don't leave. We bought some paintings there. We saw some elephants today too, besides the Elephant Terrace. It wasn't very impressive. Bayon temple was way cooler. I almost liked it better than Angkor Wat. Too bad I can't upload pictures. After these three temples, Sun Same took us back to our hotel for a rest from 1pm to 4:30.
He picked us up to see the sun set on top of another temple. You walk up a decent-sized hill and then you have to climb these crazy steps to the top. The same style of steps are in every temple, but there's usually supplementary added steps for tourists. Not here! Even so, a number of older people managed to make it up. The steps were probably 20 cm sticking out from the wall, if that makes sense. Even me with small feet had trouble. The sunset was pretty, but perhaps not spectacular. Climbing down in the semi-darkness was an adventure.
We also ran into a group of three people we'd met on the bus on the way over at the temples--the funny hipster Canadian and his Swedish friends. Additionally, we saw some monkeys.
We bought some tiny bananas for a snack. They were really good and really cheap. Very yellow inside. Tasted pretty normal. We gave the rest to a Cambodian guy sitting on a rock quite a ways away from us. It totally surprised him, but he accepted them.
For dinner, we had Sun Same drop us off at KFC, of all places. We really hadn't found anywhere that looked like it cooked safe food. We passed out by 9pm in our hotel.
