angkor wat is phenomenal. i just wrote about a thousand postcards to a lot of you saying just that (and if you don't get one it means i don't have your address and i'm a terrible person and i need you to give me your address so i can shower you in asian goodness), but i like the instant gratification of sharing it with you on the internet, too.
i should really be showing you pictures with this, too. ahhhh coulda, shoulda, woulda.
anyway, i woke up at 4:20 am (har har) on thursday so i could see the sunrise. lucky, the trusty guy who drove lexa and maddy and co. around the temples in the earlier days, arrived in front of my hostel at 5 am, ready to whisk me away to the khmer temples...on his motorbike. you all remember that terrible motorbike incident i had. i've been gun shy ever since, but it was 5 am and i really wanted to go and lucky's a nice guy so i decided to trust him and hop on the back of his motorbike.
i haven't made a better decision in ages. there's nothing like waking up and going for a motorbike ride through the dark, relatively cool siem reap morning. lucky dropped me off and told me to have fun, take my time.
a quick note on the layout of angkor wat. the big main one with three pointy things sticking up--the one you've probably seen pictures of--is the actual angkor wat. there are bunches of other temples that are part of the angkor wat temple zone, and those are all what take so much time to see. they're up to 50k apart, i think, and it can take an hour to drive to some of the farther away ones. it's a sort of complicated, oversized disneyland for temples.
angkor wat is the famous one for the sunrise. i ran into a woman the night before who'd said she wasn't that impressed, so i tried to keep my hopes down.
that woman was really super wrong. as i walked down the causeway to angkor wat, i popped out to see the most gorgeous sunrise of my whole life. THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION. the sky was hot pink with tinges of purple blending into a bright orange, lit up against the dark silhouette of angkor wat. just...you need to see it some time. (i tried to replicate it this morning, but the sky wasn't working with me.)
lucky took me to angkor thom next, which is actually a huge complex of lots of temples where people used to actually live. the main temple in the middle, bayon, has 216 faces that look precisely like the guy from "legends of the hidden temple" (the big face, not the awkward, terrible host).
after that i was hot and freaking tired and hungry (still not feeling 100% after the dengue), plus it was 10 am and it was SO EFFING HOT that i wanted an ice cream and then to lie down in an ice bath, so lucky drove me home.
at 4 pm, after a nap and a much needed recharge in the a/c, lucky came back over to the hostel and took me to ta phrom, which might look familiar cuz lara croft was totally there. (seriously--parts of "legends of the hidden temple" were filmed in and around angkor wat.) i had bought a scarf for myself the day before and wrapped it around my head when i was walking around the temples cuz it made me feel like a badass tomb raider.
the temples close at 5:30 pm, and by the time i got out everything else was closing down, so lucky drove me home. oh, then i went out to eat by myself on a busy street, which is always a weird thing but i really enjoy it. i'm reading vampire diaries cuz i'm about 14 years old, so i get a lot of time to read when i eat. cool story, huh.
aaaaaaaaaaaanyway, i went ahead and woke up early again this morning cuz it's not like i stayed out drinking by myself last night (reading at the bar has this creeper ring to it), but i was super tired and i never really woke up. my body was still exhausted from the day before, and every temple i saw today felt like something i'd already seen. around 9 am, i asked lucky (of course lucky took me again...we're bffs) to take me home. "how sure are you?" 97% sure, lucky. so he drove past another temple, i looked at it with 3% of my effort, and home we went.
today i've just been wandering around town...i ate a delish salad, had a sorbet, read my book a lot, lamented the heat to myself, then came here on the computer. now imma splurge on a plane ticket back to bangkok (i love flying--one last flight for the summer) then get back to home sweet home, suphan tomorrow!
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