I woke at 4:30 this morning to go to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. I signed up to share a tuktuk and do the small circuit tour through the guesthouse again. This time I met Curt from Georgia and a young woman from Germany and a guy from the Netherlands.
On the tuktuk ride we chatted a bit and Curt impressed us with his giant camera. He was excited to take photos of the temples. The guy from the Netherlands gave us a great tip-he said that it starts getting light around 6, but the sun does not actually rise until 7 and most people assume that there is no glowing red sun when they don't see it around 6 and they all leave. The trick is to stay til 7. So we arrived at the temple and walked in the dark to find a spot inside to watch the sunrise. It was so crowded, maybe 6 or 7 rows of people from the small pond to the grassy area behind. Curt and I found a spot on the left hand side to stand and wait as it got brighter. As expected, most people dispersed as it got light and then started walking around the temple a bit. We also explored a little bit, but stayed close to the pond to catch the reflection as it was less than an hour til actual sunrise. It was very beautiful once the sun did finally rise. Then we headed out to the tuktuk.
Again, I can't really recall all the temples we visited. I do know our first stop was breakfast and we went to our driver's sister's food stall. The food was overpriced compared to what you would find in town. Then he dropped us off at one temple and told us to make our way through about 3 or 4 of them in a row and to meet at the end. The first one was one that had 4 faces carved into the stones on each of the 4 sides of the pillars. It was pretty neat. Curt and I were really enjoying photographing everything and he gave me some tips as we went along. Our European friends were not so much into the photography and they moved through the temple rather quickly. We went on to the next one and they said we should try to go faster to make it through all of the temples before our meeting time with the driver. The 4 of us agreed to meet at the entrance before moving on. We picked up our pace and went through; this one required a steep climb up to get to the top of it. All was going well until the end when the signs pointed visitors to the backside rather than the front where we had agreed to meet. I found the Europeans but we waited and waited for Curt. The guy went in search of him and found Curt waiting for us on the other side. We continued on to the next two a bit faster and when we finally ended, our driver was kind of cross with us and told us we had taken too long. The main temple that the Europeans wanted to see was Tah Prohm (Tomb Raider temple) and so we ended up skipping a lot of the smaller ones to make it to Tah Prohm (as we had a noon deadline according to the driver). We asked to return to Angkor Wat, but as we got close to the temple he said we'd have a 10 minute walk to the complex and it would leave us with only 5 minutes to even see it. So we just returned to the hotel.
At the hostel, Curt and I had lunch together. Both of us were debating whether or not to return to Angkor Wat. We agreed we'd head back out around 3, giving us about 2 hours to relax. I was going to take a nap, but realized I wasn't that sleepy. Instead I took a fast shower and then went to the market to look around, not sure of what I would have time for the following day. We met up at 3 and got a tuktuk to Angkor Wat. It was neat to return there again at a different time of day and get a feel for the temple. We wandered around a bit and enjoyed the different lighting on the stones. We ran into Ellie and her friends and I shared the "wait until 7am tip" with her since she was going to see the sun rise the following day. There was a temple on the top of the complex and we had a very steep climb up. Once we were up there, we thought maybe we could stay there and see the sunset from way up high, but at 5:00 the temple closed and they were kicking people out. We climbed down and walked around the complex a bit more and found another place to kind of see the sky change colors.
I had made plans to meet with Olivia, Joanne and Brett for dinner after their group thing. When I returned to the hostel and I saw Kim. I invited her and Curt to join us for dinner. The three of us went into town and met up with the Geckos group at a restaurant. I stole Olivia, Brett and Joanne. We went for dinner, but they had already eaten so they just ordered drinks. It was fun catching up with them, even though it had only been a few days. We walked through the market and called it a night because the Geckos crew had the sunrise at Angkor Wat in the morning. I was on the fence about seeing another sunrise or not, but decided I'd see how I felt in the morning.
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