Siem Reap, Cambodia: Angkor Wat

What if I pretended like I never had an 8 month lapse in the upkeep of this blog? Let's all pretend, shall we??? Ok. Good. Moving on...

Living in Japan has afforded us the incredible opportunity to see lots (and I mean lots) of temples and shrines. Each is beautiful and so cool to see but I will go ahead and admit that I am quickly losing interest in visiting each one. Perhaps it would be different if they pertained to my religion or my own country's history, but the fascination is sadly being lost. I must say though, I really am embarrassed to admit that. (I'm also embarrassed to admit I never spell embarrassed correctly the first time. ::1 M, 2 R's,2 S's:: good grief!) I know how wonderful and truly enticing visiting old ruins can and should be, but the facts and old rocks all start blurring after a few hours of touring.

When we got our taxi from the airport to our hotel our driver tried SO hard to rent himself out to us to be our tour guide for the temples. "No thanks", we said. "We already have a driver through our hotel", we said. The whole 10 minute drive he tried to convince us, but his accent was so thick we had a really hard time understanding him so we turned him down. We wanted to learn about the temples... turns out the guy given to us through the hotel had the same problem, oh well! Sokha was quite the character though! He had a wealth of knowledge to share about the temples. Oh I'm sorry. Did I forget to tell you about the Temples? Yes? My b. We went to Angkor Wat. ANGKOR WAT. This incredible piece of history was hidden, lost, and rediscovered just a few hundred years ago after hundreds of years of it sitting in the jungle.

When we booked our tour through the temples we knew that in general, we were 'templed-out'. The hotel concierge was so surprised when we said we had 3 more days in Siem Reap and were only going to do the one day tour, and the short circuit. I KNOW that each and every temple there in Siem Reap would be incredible to see and learn about but overall we knew we'd be pleased with spending just one day. FYI you can buy up to two week long passes... you could really spend that much time seeing them, but we were content with one day.

Sokha and the driver picked us up in a tuk-tuk and took us to buy our day passes which had to show them to get into each temple.

The main attraction in Siem Reap is Angkor Wat. It's huge and is a world heritage site. Because we learned so much about it and can't possibly remember all of the facts We also visited Angkor Thom (where Tomb Raider was filmed... just call me Angelina) and many other temples. I'll save you the details (as hey, it's been almost a year since we went, and I've forgotten the facts) and let you google the info. Instead, I'll show you pictures. Pictures are worth a thousand words. Right? Here's 12,000.

Disclaimer: I am 100% completely aware that my outfit is not cute. Women must cover your shoulders and knees to enter the temple sites, and out of respect, I came up with this dress. Which is a maternity dress from the BX. No. I am not pregnant. The tennis shoes are because of the walking. Oh my, there was walking. The hat was because of the sun. I could have worked harder to create a cute outfit, but I didn't. Oh well!