(I’m sitting in the sunset of Koh Tao, writing this blog and drinking banana lassi – bliss!)

Up bright and early at 4.30am to catch the sunrise at Ankor Wat! Believe it or not, but I actually got cold that morning, first time in so long!
We rehired our tuk-tuk driver from the previous day (Mr. Sim) and joined the multiple other tuk-tuks along the speedway (actually, a dark road travelling relatively slowly, everyone seemed to be passing us!), 5 km to the giant temple. With great anticipation, we arrived (with everyone else) and walked across the moat via a long sandstone walk-way, through an old stone gate to the entrance! And low and behold, we didn’t see anything – too dark! Unfortunately we didn’t have the foresight to being a torch either but easily used other people’s light. The walkway continued toward Angkor Wat, about halfway there was an intersection with another walkway that marked the start of two small lakes at the front of Angkor Wat. The magic of watching the sunrise really lies in the reflection of Ankor Wat off the lake, so we sneakily made our way through the crowd to the shore and watched the magic – beautiful! Slowly Angkor Wat came into view, such an amazing building especially as a silhouette!
Angkor Wat was built by Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as a temple and eventual mausoleum. It was originally hindu, but now has been converted to a Buddhist temple, the only one to remaining functioning over nearly 900 years.
Inside Angkor Wat are two levels; the first level is a huge courtyard, and in the middle is the second level which holds the five towers. Many people had headed back into town for breakfast by this stage so there were not many people about at all! Around the outside are detailed carvings portraying wars and mythical history, each side of the temple nearly 200m in length. The are still in amazing condition form being a 1000 years old. The temple is also famous for it ‘apsaras’ carvings, each dancer unique in its design. Unfortunately we had to wait until it was fully light until we could climb the second level, by now we were pretty hungry! The second level had really steep stairs (all the stairs tested my knee!), and another courtyard in the middle.

After finishing, we brought two pineapples on sticks for breakfast, quite small compared to the ones at home, a little bigger than the size of my hand and sweeter. Just up the road and round the corner, our tuk-tuk driver dropped us at The Bayon this was one of my favourite temples! Quite big, and so many strange corners, corridors and large smiling faces to explore! Is famous for the numerous giant Buddha faces carved into it, and is even used as a backdrop for temple dinners, whether a private romantic occasion or large corporal event. Unfortunately a lot of tour groups also visited it straight after Angkor so it was quite crowded, but still amazing! While we were waiting for our driver to return from breakfast, we sat down and observed a man looking after an alter just by the entrance. When people came to worship, he gave them an incense stick in exchange for some $, which they put into a small pot full with sand. They also offered money to the golden gold/Buddha by putting cash on a plate in front of it. When the people left, the guy went round and pocketed the cash and put the used incense back into his unused pile in order to resell to the next people – genius! We also saw a couple of guys climb barefoot to the very top of the temple (of course without a harness or safety gear) to weed the top and sides!

The next day we had a great sleep in then went straight out to the farmhouse for lunch. Along the way we called into the pottery shop where Kethana gets the crockery for their restaurant hand,are. They opened especially for us, and lucky they did as we made a ‘few’ purchases! Our goods should arrive by Christmas….each one piece, very excited!

We had a delicious lunch of duck curry and spent the afternoon lying around (my tummy wasn’t feeling too good), before heading back to town and out for some Italian for dinner.