Angkor Wat!

So I did make it to Angkor Wat through the army of touts and tuktuks. Here are pics to prove it.

Crossing the bridge to the west gate. 

So there are lots of people here. Busses and tuk tuks and touts and tourists everywhere.

A window inside the west gate.

Lots of windows on the inside wall.

Standing Bhudda.

The bas relief along the north part of the west wall.

And on one of the columns.

The relief on the left, the columns on the right... You know, in case you couldnt tell.

Now you'll notice there are no other people in this photo. It's very rare for people to stray off the main central path to the tower in the middle of the complex. I wasted four hours there so I roamed everywhere I could. There were a couple of others that wandered along the outer wall, but not many.

Monk, playing with his phone...

Vishnu. The guidebook says that this probably would have lived in the central tower at first, but it was moved to southern part of the west gate at some point. 

Another view of the naga bridge. The book said this would have been built hundreds of years after the rest of the complex because of the style.

Once you're inside you can follow the main path to the center, or a path just north of that past the souvenir shops and food stalls, or just roam around anywhere really.

Where they build replacement parts.

The five towers of Angkor Wat. The whole complex represents the universe, and these towers are the peaks of Mt Meru. Also note the line of people getting a photo with the reflection in the pond.

See, I got one too.

360 degree panorama from in front of the pond. I don't know how to display this  better.

Another view from the grounds. Note the Desire Paths

The north wall.

From one of the gates in the wall.

There's 600m of this along the outside of the wall.

Just next to the above.

And a few more steps over again.

The outer wall and inner wall...

More of the walls, with one of the two libraries.

So I saw this was the line up to the five towers... Several tour groups had arrived at once. So wandered around a lot more and waited for it to die down before I went up.

The southern library.

Showing how steep the stairs are.

Panorama view of the central part of the temple.

HDR view of four of the five towers. Note the ghosty people.

Young monk keeping eye on the central tower.

This guy is looking up at the central tower, thinking, "wow, that's a tower".

Reclining bhudda under the tower.

A relief with japanese writing over it... I assume that was added later. (Japanese is curved lines, chinese is straight lines, korean has circles. That's right isn't it?)

This one would be chinese then? It's still graffiti anyway. Unless it says something important, but I doubt it.

More restoration work.

Looking out to the west gate.

This guy was looking out to the west gate.

HDR central tower.

After that I went to visit the gates on the outer wall.  No tourists seemed to stray out that far (unless with a guide at the east gate). There were a couple of locals swimming in the moat. But in the south gate I just walked through and there was a Cambodian lady praying in there. I sat outside the gate for a bit just resting, and after the lady finished praying she came out and started talking to me but I didn't know any Cambodian (aside from thankyou, which I recognised when she said it). She offered me bananas, but I didn't take any. She was quite happy. After she left I set off round the moat.

The south gate.

The moat.

Part of the wall around the island.

The path I was following.

The east gate. Used by the locals and by smarter tour guides.

The gap through the wall, so they can drive in.

Part of the carvings on this gate.

The north gate. This one was completely deserted. 

Inside the north gate.

Then that was all for Angkor Wat. The next day I went out to Angkor Thom and I'm still going through all the photos. Today I'll go to the two bigger temples just outside Angkor Thom, one of them known as Tomb Raider temple because the movie was filmed there.