We have spent this week in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Most known for the location of the biggest religious building on Earth, Angkor Wat, but also a land of wonderful people, food, and pretty sure it is located directly on the sun.
This has been a long awaited part of our journey. We have been excited to see Angkor Wat since we were in the early planning stages of our trip. Angkor Wat is considered to be the 8th Wonder of the World as it is the biggest religious building on Earth and is deemed the "Holiest of Holies."
We booked our tour the day before while watching the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight in a local....well restaurant, or bar, or house..not really sure what the place was actually as no one spoke English, there was no menu and when we ordered beers they went into the house to get them. We just kind of sat down at a table and people were very nice, turned on a fan for us and we watched the fight with them. During the fight we were chatting with another customer and as it turned out he was the brother of our favorite tuk-tuk driver from our hotel. So we booked a sunrise tour with him for 5:00 am the next day. He is also taking us to the airport tonight for our departure to the Philippines.
So back to the temples. Angkor Wat was our first stop and we sat along the outside of the mote with seas of other tourists watching an amazing sunrise and listening to camera shutters go off like the sound of applause. Truly an awe inspiring sight and really makes us want to experience the other wonders of the world.
During the tour we visited Angkor Wat, Bayon, Baphuon, Terrace of the Elephants, Terrace of the Leper King and the Phimeanakas Temple. To summarize the experience the temple features that made an impact on us were the gargantuan size, the amazingly intricate details of the rock carving and statues, and we really enjoyed the huge faces of Bayon placed all orund the temple. 216 faces in all. We also saw some elephants and monkeys in between temples.
Siem Reap is a fun place with "Pub Street" providing great food, interesting people watching and a lively nightlife. We were able to hit a lot of top-rated restaurants and bars in our Lonely Planet travel guide. We ate Khmer, Cambodian, French, Western and Indian food here, oh yeah and we ate BUGS. We heard about this place called Bugs Cafe while riding elephants from a Canadian couple that were in our group. The joint has a menu fusing French Cuisine along with Khmer Cuisine in a fashion that has ants, scorpians, crickets, silk worms, snake, crocodile, and a bunch of other insects. The french chef told us before the meal the goal was to marry the 2 types of cuisine along with using bugs to show that insects can be used in delicious and nutritious ways. We went kinda novice and ordered puff-pastry with ants accompanied with pesto and pecorino cheese, but also some table neighbors let us sample their silk worm, cricket and lemongrass veggie stir fry. The food had great flavors and the insects weren't bad, just a new texture to us. We felt a little like Timon & Pumba from the Lion King.
Here is a big ol' pile of pictures for ya!
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