Angkor Wat and the Neverending Temple Tour!

Wow! Angkor Wat is big! Sure, you could just go to Angkor Wat, isn't that what everyone goes to Cambodia for? but then you realize that it isn't just Angkor Wat. It's Angkor Thom, Bayon, East Mebon, Kbal Spean, Etc..... Tickets are sold in 1 day, 3 days continuous, 3 days during a week or 7 day passes, for 20, 40, and 60 US dollars. We chose the 3 day in a week option. It ended up being the perfect amount as we were both so sick of the scorching sun and extremely early mornings by day 3.

I guess I'll start with a day by day account of where we went.
Day 1a: 5pm: Lonely Planet states that if you buy your tickets to the Angkor Wat park after 500pm, you can get a "free sunset," as the pass doesn't start until the next day. We Rented bikes for 24hrs from the tour agency 2 business away from our hotel, Angkor Park Guest House(it seems every business in Cambodia is in some how named after Angkor Wat) We rent bikes at 450 and head to watch the sunset at Phnom Bakheng, the only hill near Angkor Wat. We do our best to figure out how to get to the ticket selling office, but our map is incomplete, and we take the wrong road, and end up at the ticket checkpoint naer Angkor Wat only to find out that the checkpoint is 4km behind us on a different road. The lady says we can go in anyways, so we head to the hill. We lock up the bikes and head up the hill. After 20m a guard tells us that the path to the top closes to people entering at 530, and it is 532. We end up walking around the outer wall and gateway to Angkor Wat, checking out the entranceway, moat,mini lake, and "libraries" plus sites outside the entrance of the actual building. We bike back to the hotel around 7pm, stopping for dollar tacos, and 50cent Angkor Draft at our new favorite restaurant, Viva Mexican Restaurant in Siam Reap, which is seriously better than most mexican restaurants in Philly.

Day 1: We wake up at 4am, leave at 430, grabbing our bikes from our hotel's garage, and then at the ticket building, where we get our pictures taken for our 3day pass to the park. We make it to Angkor Wat around 5ish, maybe 515(Jin is our official timekeeper, the plastic watches i've bought here suck.)We watch the sunrise over Angkor, although we got there about 15 minutes late and missed the beginning and middle. We spend from 515ish to maybe 10 at Angkor Wat. We then bike to the NE, up to the former temple at the center of the now dried up eastern rectangular reservoir, named East Mebon. We then head back SW towards the town of Siam Reap, stopping at a few other sites on the way home, including Pre Rup, Phum Srah Srang, Srah Srang(the third largest rectangular reservoir), and Banteay Kdei. We bike back to town around 5ish...exhausted.

Day 2: We meet our newly hired tuk tuk driver outside our hotel at 445am and make it to Angkor Wat around 505 to watch the best part of the sunrise over Angkor Wat. It was pretty cool, and definitely a memorable experience. After a couple of hours, and some awesome chicken curry and chicken Amok(we still havent figured out exactly what this is, but its supposed to be something steamed in giant leaves, but it looks more like yellow curry, we're confused) we head to some northern sites including Preah Khan and Ta Som at first. We then take an hour long ride in our Tuk Tuk to the site of Kbal Spean, where a 150meter section of a very small stream has carvings on many rocks, and whole 20 foot areas where the entirety of the large flat rocks at the base of the stream have been carved. It was really sweet, despite the fact that I had to hike 1500meters uphill in super hot weather to get there. We head back south towards town and stop at Banteay Srei, deciding much to our Tuk Tuk drivers chagrin to head back home and go to one of the coolest sites, Ta Prohm the next day.

Day 3: The same Tuk Tuk driver picks us up at 530am and we head to the sites 11km east of town, instead of the complex near Angkor Wat, which is 6km north of town. We tell our driver we want to go to Bakong, but end up at the tiny site of Lolei first. We check out Lolei and haed next to Bakong. Bakong is a cool site that is "temple Mountain" that is supposed to represent the mythical Mt Maru, and dedicated to Shiva. Afterwards, we head NW, and go to the site of Ta Prohm, which we had been trying to make it to the first 2days. Ta Prohm is the site that where they have left some of the enormous trees at the site, instead of removing them like at other sites. This is where the "tomb raider" tree is and where most or all of the overgrown forrest pictures you see from Angkor. It is awesome, and the massive trees are amazing, and somewhat scary, kinda like giant snakes or an octopus strangling a building. The site is less overgrown than you'd think, but still really amazing. We then head to the center of Angkor Thom, to go to Bayon, the temple with the faces on the four sides of the tower you always see. It is really cool, and definitely made me feel like Indiana Jones. We then walked north to the pyramid of Baphuon(after being rebuilt completely it looks more like a pedestal), and then the Royal complex, and elephant terrace. I spent an extra 2 bucks and had our driver take us a total of 15km out of our way to the edge of the the largest rectangular reservoir with water still in it, to check out West Mebon. Unfortunately because of the dry season, West Mebon is only half full, and you can walk the 3plus km to the mini temple at the center of the lake. We got back around 4pm and paid our tuk tuk driver 16bucks for the day.