Angkor: A Brief Taste

We spent the past three days touring the Angkor temples in Cambodia, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat. It was a magical, phenomenal, incredibly hot, awesome, intriguing, somewhat rainy, impressive three days. Our top ten list has had a rather mutable, amorphous existence. Angkor was on every iteration but it still exceeded our expectations.

After nine hours of travel today, I am not up for giving my "Angkor: the History, Architecture. and Religious Iconography" lecture tonight. Don't worry, I promise to regale -- or bore -- you with the details soon. For now, here are some of our favorite pictures from the first day.

South Gate of Angkor Thom, the city of Jayavarman VII, was our first sight of the glories of Angkor. That is me in the blue hat, trying to look at everything at once.

The intro picture in this post is of Bayon, located inside Angkor Thom. While Angkor Wat is iconic, Bayon, with its jumbled mass of face towers, is a more intriguing space. We spent a good hour wandering through the ballustrades and doors of the lower terrace, a small portion of which are pictured below.

It was a hot day but the tops of the temples caught the breeze nicely. We took a lovely rest break in the windows on the top terrace of Phimeanakas' Temple.

The Leper King's Terrace, also in Angkor Thom, is covered in elaborate carvings. Here a king is surrounded by the ladies of the court.

We arrived at Angkor Wat in the early evening, giving us an almost perfect view of the outer most gopuras of Angkor Wat across the causeway.