Cambodia!! We had a nice short flight from Bangkok and we were happy to get to Siem Reap. The immigration line was short. Cole and I were a little sad because Halloween was coming and we were going to miss it in Hermosa. But, we ended up having a great Halloween with candy, a Boo Basket, and carving melons and it was a good first couple days in Cambodia!!
One of the best parts of Cambodia was the pool at our place!! We went swimming everyday unless it was raining. The food was good, too. We ate more bugs and tried some new foods.
Today I was woken up early by my parents. Can you guess why?? I was going to see four famous temples!! I woke up at 4 am and drove in a car for 20 minutes to a place where we you get tickets. We got picked up and met our guide Mr. T and our driver Adam. After we got our tickets we went to Angkor Wat, which is the most famous temple. We went to Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise. Angkor Wat means temple city and has five towers. It was originally a Hindu temple and then when the power changed it became a buddhist temple. The five towers symbolize Mount Meru, the home of the gods in Hindu mythology.
We walked across a floating bridge to get there. It was really big and pretty. We got to have free time to explore Angkor Wat. We walked along a walkway that lead to the entry of Angkor Wat. We went inside and it was like a giant maze! There were statues at the front. We took a lot of photos because it was really cool place!! There were a lot of carving of ancient kings and Buddhas and scripts. Even of elephants and horses!
The next temple we visited was called Bayon. It is a Khmer (that means Cambodian) temple that was really old, too. It has a lot of smiling stone faces of Buddhas and of the king that built the temple. This temple had 54 towers and on each of the sides of each temple was a face. So, there are over 200 stone carved faces here!! I liked this temple because Cole and I got to roam free and explore on our own!! We thought we would see temple monkeys, but we couldn’t find any. I saw two little black kittens, some dogs and lots of ants… AND BATS!!!!
After Bayon, we got to go to a temple called Ta Prohm. We called it Tomb Raider. I don’t know if you’ve ever played the video game or saw the movie, but some of it was filmed there. I loved all of the nature there. There were so many ginormous trees there growing in and around the temple. The tree roots were growing inside and outside of the temple and surrounding it! The trees are hundreds of years old! These temples were all forgotten about and the jungle took them over and surrounded them. Some of the temples have been cleared of the trees so we can see them, but most of them are underground or have been swallowed up by the jungle!! THIS REMINDS ME OF POMPEII AND OF ROME!!!!!!!!!! They were all at one time built by humans and were civilized and then nature buried them!
After that we went to the fourth temple. It was also a Khmer temple and was called Banteay Kdei. That means Citadel of Monks Cells. That’s where a lot of monks lived until the 1960s. We didn’t see any monkeys there either, but it was really cool. That one had A LOT OF BATS!!!!
The temples were fun today. Maybe by the time I come back to Cambodia, more of the temples will be uncovered and discovered!!!
Today I woke up and was going to leave Cambodia and go to Vietnam. In the morning I ate breakfast. I had toast. Then I went swimming in the pool. I was sad to be swimming in that pool for the last time because it was my favorite pool on the trip so far. The only thing I didn’t like about it was that we found a gigantic millipede in it on the last day, but daddy took it out and threw it in the grass. I am going to miss Cambodia, even though there were a lot of mosquitos and lizards. We even had a lizard in our house!! It was a baby, so we didn’t mind. We called her Lizzy.
