The magnificent temples of Angkor

We travelled from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, which would be our base to explore the many temples around Angkor. We settled into to our lovely guest house, arranged a driver and set our alarm for the very unsociable hour of 4.30am. We were collected by our tuk tuk driver at what felt like the middle of the night and headed out to Angkor Wat. We stumbled around in the darkness to find a good spot and then waited for the sun to rise up over the magnificent temple. It was breathtaking to see more and more of this incredibly beautiful temple reveal itself as the sun came up. The scale of the place was so impressive and it was easy to see why it is the national treasure of Cambodia. We wandered around the huge building, marvelling at the intricate carvings which seemed to change as the light fell on them. I think that Angkor Wat is probably the most impressive place I have ever been to.
We spent a long time wandering round the various temples of Angkor Thom; Bayon, another big-hitter, was largely made up of carvings of faces looking in all directions. As we climbed up into the building, more and more faces were revealed to us. We also marvelled at Phimeanakas, a huge temple which was being restored back in the 1970s and had been taken  apart brick by brick. The Khmer Rouge came in, removed most of the heads from the Buddhas and destroyed all of the records which were held on the restoration. They are now facing the enormous challenge of putting it back together with nothing to work from!
Two of the temples, Ta Prohm and Preah Khan had been pretty much left how they were found, with the jungle taking over. It was amazing to see these huge buildings crumbling where trees have grown out of them, with roots intertwined with stones. We could almost imagine what it would have been like to have discovered these incredible temples in the jungle. It would take far too long to describe all of the temples we visited over the two days, and we would probably lose all blog-followers, but each had it's own unique beauty and in any other place, would have been a major tourist draw alone.
We ended our very long first day watching the sunset from Pre Rup (albeit it, along with a couple of hundred other people) before waking our sleeping tuk tuk driver from his hammock (in which he had spent most of the day - I think he may have suffered from narcolepsy) to take us back to Siem Reap for a welcome cold Angkor beer.

Angkor Wat at sunrise

One of the many faces of Bayon

It was peaceful if I didn't look behind me!