Angkor What?

I am in Siem Reap, Cambodia this week. So far, I have taken two half day afternoon tours of various sites in Angkor with two friends I met on my Vietnam Intrepid Tour. We hired a guide and an air conditioned car organized by our hotel. I had read on Tripadvisor about so many great local guides that I thought we would be fairly safe in using whatever guide the hotel came up with. That is so not the case. The guide was fine and at $15 total for a half day was not a huge investment, but we would have done just as well on our own with a copy of Lonely Planet. It was a much better alternative than joining a huge Sinh Tour again since we could dictate the pace and had the guide to ourselves. He also took some great pictures for us like the one of me Eskimo kissing one of the one hundred and forty eight remaining faces of The Bayon.

Last night, we bought copies (really high quality, color photocopies) of Ancient Angkor by Claude Jacques, a great book explaining the history and symbolism behind Angkor's temples. My friend managed to bargain a vendor in the Night Market down to $3.50 each copy, a much better bargain than a guide. I have been reading it and am going to take it along the next two days as I revisit Angkor Wat and explore some of the lesser known sites. Earning the title of the largest preindustrial city in the world at 1,000 square kilometers, I won't get anywhere close to seeing all of it, though.

We woke up at 4am on Monday to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. It was worth it...just. Thankfully, we hadn't booked a tour that morning so we gladly took our tuk tuk back to our hotel where I was asleep again by 9am.