Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm

We started out the next day at Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom is the largest complex there, and was the latest capital of the Khmer Empire. It's huge! I think the walls are something like 3km on a side.

At the centre of it is the Bayon, which was the temple for the capital- that's it behind us. I'm holding the Cambodia Lonely Planet, as I played tour guide yet once again today.



I think one of the most famous things about the Bayon is the many many towers that have faces carved in to the tops of them. I think the number of faces is in the hundreds, but that's just a vague recollection from my tour guide days.



Not all the faces are identical either--some of them seem to have a personality.



The Bayon also has many reliefs carved into the walls--although the ones at Angkor Wat are better preserved and more extensive (and therefore more famous). This ones are in a different style, because the building of the temples is separated by centuries. The carvings at the Bayon are much deeper into the rock...



After we finished exploring Angkor Thom, we worked our way to Ta Prohm, stopping along the way at a few other temples (Angkor really is a huge complex!)

Scenes from various other temples...





We finished the afternoon at Ta Prohm (shortly before, but not too shortly before, we all completely melted from the heat). I think this is the one that we were looking forward to the most. It's also known as the jungle temple, and is famous because there are trees growing intertwined up throughout the ruins. It really makes for some spectacular scenes...



When I say that the reason it is so famous is because of the trees, maybe I should clarify and say that's the reason it was so famous. Now, perhaps, it's because of Tomb Raider, which had many scenes filmed here.

We listened to many tour guides explain to their groups which scenes from Tomb Raider were filmed in which area, and how they all personally knew Angelina Jolie. The tour guide for our group (me), unfortunately, could not do that. One because the Lonely Planet I was working from didn't have Tomb Raider details in it; Two because Angelina and I had a falling out, and I don't want to talk about her anymore; and Three, because I thought the trees were just much much more interesting.

Apparently this is one of the only temples that's been left nearly how it was discovered, because it's the trees intermixed with the ruins that gives it it's character.



You can see on the wall here where the Images of Buddha were chipped out of the wall when it was converted away from a Buddhist temple.



We spent our last day in Siem Reap basically trying not to melt (did I mention how hot it was there? And this is the cool season!). One solution we came up with was to go for ice cream--it ended up being the fanciest ice cream ever....