World Heritage Site
We took the bus up to Siem Reap and explored quite a bit of Angkor Wat. As soon as we got off the bus and checked into the hotel, we headed over to the temples. We spent that first afternoon exploring Angkor Wat and climbing up the big hill to watch the sunset over the rice fields. As we walked down the hill, it rained really hard on us. When we got to the bottom, the sky was a really pretty orange-pink color and everything was really beautiful. We walked around a little as we waited for our driver to return. We walked over to the large gate to Angkor and walked across the bridge with the decapitated stone statues on it. As we were walking around, we heard a really strange noise. It sounded like the kind of noise in a horror movie right before something attacks, but it sounded mechanical, not natural. We asked our driver what it was later, and he said crickets. It was really strange and I have never heard crickets like that before.
We returned to Siem Reap and found Indian food! Yay Indian food! We ate some sort of curry and of course, naan. And then we found Bubble Tea!!!! Yay Bubble Tea!!! After bubble tea, we returned to the hotel (down a little dirt alley, because we don’t like to pay as much).
The next day, we woke up early (8:00 or 9:00, well, it’s early if you don’t go to sleep until 1:00 or 2:00 AM!!). We set out from Siem Reap with a Tuk Tuk driver we had hired the previous day. He took us to Angkor Wat first. At Angkor Wat, I took Grace around and showed her everything that I had seen the previous year. It’s hard to imagine but next year, I’ll most likely be dragging my parents and sister up and down Angkor Wat, might as well become a tour guide. The temples were again amazing. After Angkor Wat, we saw most of the other main temples inside the city of Angkor. Some of them, I had never been to before. After those temples, we went to Ta Phrom and had lunch while it rained.
After the rain had finished, we walked around Ta Phrom and looked at all of the cool trees growing on the stones and looked at the restoration work going on there. It’s kind of interesting because so many of the temples were different this year. They were under repair, had finished undergoing repair, or were opened and closed in different areas due to safety considerations or other unexplained reasons. We took tons and tons of pictures and bought different cloths and shirts and things from kids that were selling them. Went back to town, found some food, and headed to sleep again.