At 10 am it was still nice and fresh and after cycling a little bit along the 7km road to Angkor in the shade of the trees and the wind in my hear it was bearable.
Our first stop was Angkor Wat (it's on the way, so why not :-)) and this time we took our time to look around and thanks to my Angkor Guide boon I bought we even got to know deep insights to many of the bas reliefs on the outside walls of the inner three enclosures of the temple. Each of them depicted details from a famous hindu story.
Angkor Wat is originally built as a hindu temple and is a complete representation of the hindu universe with the five peaks of the holy mount Meru in the middle and surrounded by the immense moat which represents the all-surrounding sea.
It's all in the book I can't remember everything but it certainly is all very interesting and I will bring back the book, so if anyone wants to have a look, please let me know.
By now the air got quite warm and while walking through the temple for an hour or so I drained my entire 1.5 litre bottle of water. I was glad when we got back to the bikes and the shade of the trees and the wind kept me cool.
We had some lunch and then went on to the Angkor Thom and had a quick look at some of the temples there. Again, with the help of the guidebook we found some interesting little details in each temple.
While taking a rest under the shady trees a monkey tried to steal my bicycle but fortunately he didn't reach the pedals nor the handle bar and just shrieked and jumped off. From here we left Angkor Thom through the northern gate to get to Preah Khan, another immense temple complex, this one was more a building with many rooms rather than large empty spaces as it is in Angkor Wat and it was not fully reconstructed and had a bit of an adventurous atmosphere about it.
This is where if finished my second 1.5 liter bottle of water :-).
Ali hasn't visited Ta Prohm, so it was another visit to the Tomb Raider temple and it's famous tree and then we were trying to catch the sunset from Pre Rup.
We just arrived a few minutes to late. The sun was nearly gone we still had to get back to the hostel. Of course there were no (functioning) lights on our bikes and it was about an 14 or 15 km ride back.
Luckily after about 5 or 6 km we merged onto Charles de Gaulle boulevard which had street lamps and led us right back into Siem Reap.
This time my energy did not suffice for a swim in the pool, but the shower did good as well.
I decided to have an alcohol free day. Then 10 minutes later I was asked to join a drinking game round. I did and I stayed on coke and water for a while and then felt bad for everyone else at the table and headed to bed to do a bit of writing on the blog and reading my book.
A bit of a boring end to a long and exciting day... Sorry guys!
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