Angkor

It's been three full days of trodding on temples. Linda, Mike and I rocked into Siem Reap on Saturday afternoon after a hell-ish bus ride consisting of massive hangovers, stomach cramps, no air conditioning and about 30 people too many cramped into the tiny bus. After relaxing for a short time at our lovely, quirky little guesthouse we headed out to buy our tix and join the tourist-circus-hoolapalla that's called Angkor. Our first experience was watching the sunset from a giant ruin of a stone temple, an evening shared with thousands and thousands of people thrusting their cameras around for the best shot of the evening.

The next three days were calmer, spent cycling through the Angkor grounds, absorbing the enormous and breath-taking temples built in the 11th-13th centuries. One city, Angkor Thom once housed 1 million people, an enormous number in comparison to the 30,000 that resided in London at the time. There are too many temples to see, too much to absorb but we tried our best to pack in the maximum number of temples our eyes, feet and cameras could manage.

The Angkor excursion ended this morning after a 4:30am wake up call, a one hour bike ride in the dark of the forest, a climb up and into a temple and a gorgeous sunrise sending pink streaks through the sky above the famed Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world, a truly stunning site that will no doubt stick with me forever.

The temples of Angkor are unbelievable, mindblowing in their lasting complexity, beauty and majesty. Mythical, Mystical, Magical" was the cheeseball slogan I devised for the experience and it certainly was.