Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is a truly amazing structure. We left at five in the morning to get there by sunrise, although that wasn't really everything it was made out to be. It was cool to approach across the causeway and see the structure of the gate in the predawn light. But once you got inside, it was crowded with tourists and sunrise lasted for about ten minutes and had about... well, if it was a life size panting, the artist used about three mg of paint for the entire thing. It was fairly interesting once you got inside, and because we were doing things backwards, there were no tourists. (You are supposed to go for sunrise and leave immediately for Angkor Thom, and then come back to Angkor Wat.) We got to see some cool reliefs, including the Churning of the Sea of Milk. in this relief, the demons and the humans are pulling on a Naga wrapped around a mountain in the middle of the sea so that they can churn the milk into the elixir of immortality. While this was quite interesting, we couldn't go to the top because of restoration work, and I really wanted to do that (partially because I knew it would freak mom out). After this, we went to Preah Ko (I think), which was really big. It was mostly in ruins, though, and we got stuck behind a tour group. The ruins were really cool, even though mom wouldn't let me climb on anything. Finally, we went to another of the temples, which was really boring because they were restoring it and all you could do was walk around the outside.