We had a pretty long day today. We started out by visiting Angkor Tom, one of the largest ancient Cambodia populated centers. In there, we visited Bayon which is famous for its many enigmatic smiles of the bodhisattva smiling. The site was expansive with numerous carvings on the wall, each describing a story based on Hinduism and Buddhism.
We then walked over to Baphuon, another temple currently under renovation by the French. Back in ancient times, the temple was apparently covered in gold. Right next to the Baphuon, we climbed Phimeanakas, another temple which was also covered in gold back in the good old times. Our next stop was Preah Palilay, a large Buddhist temple with trees growing on and around the temple itself. I got all excited about tree growing out of the temple when Eugine told me to calm down until we visit Ta Prohm, which is famous for the tree and temple combination.
We then walked to Elephant Terrace and Leper King Terrace, a large but low building with elephant and hundreds of Buddha carvings. After a quick lunch at a Cambodian restaurant, we headed over to Blue Pumpkin. Blue Pumpkin was recommended to us by Kim and Dan (whom we met in Bangkok). Blue Pumpkin is a very modern and hip restaurant/café and per Dan's suggestion, we tried their ice cream which was great. We went to Angkor Wat in the afternoon. The Wat was amazing. There were many intricate carvings on the wall, similar to those found in Bayon. We climbed many large steep steps to get to the top of Angkor Wat. We were supposed to climb up Phnom Bahkeng to watch the sunset but it started raining as we were leaving Angkor Wat. So we went to a killing field where a number of Cambodians were murdered for pretty much no reason under a lunatic dictator. Under the dictatorship, there were about 2 million innocent Cambodians who were murdered. FYI, the population of Cambodia currently stands at 14 million.
We then went to visit a mine museum. Cambodia apparently has a large number of mines still in existence due to its long and bloody civil war. It is not uncommon to see kids and young males missing a limb or two because they accidentally stepped on a mine. For dinner, we decided to go back to Blue Pumpkin to have some western food. After some time on the internet, we went to bed. More thumbnails ...
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