Awkunh Cambodia! Thank you Cambodia!

We had the most amazing 9 days in Siem Reap! Cambodian people are super friendly and helpful! The food is amazing and the Angkor temples are just breathtaking! Cambodia is definitely a must visit country! We only saw a little glimpse of Cambodia and loved it! so we can only imagine how wonderful the rest of the country must be! 

We leave you with same random shots of the Angkor Archaeological complex, 

After Siem Reap our next destination was Thailand! Bangkok!

The Angkor Wat Sunrise and the Big Circuit

We had been biking the last 4 days to Angkor and it had been amazing! But it would be tricky to reach the Angkor Wat Sunrise by bike and after reach all the temples of the Big Circuit! So we took a tuk-tuk for the day in order to see both!

We never expected so much people to be there at 5AM... but it was full of tourists with their humongous cameras!

We waited and waited.... the sky was really cloudy,

With a little help of my color filter I was able to pull a bit the sunrise colors,

With our matchy-matchy tshirts,

Exploring the Angkor Wat temple,

The breathtaking sculptures that showed the conquers of the Kings,

The view from the top of the Angkor Wat temple,

Leaving the Angkor Wat we saw a couple of monks...

that were basically posing for a tour group...

The Angkor Wat is a beautiful temple but we personally liked better the Bayon and Ta Prom temples!

Time to continue our exploration! visiting the Big Circuit that contains the temples further away from Angkor Wat: Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon and Pre Rup.

Our ride!

In the temples there was always a lot of little children trying to sell you postcards and impressively they knew how to count them in a couple of languages!

We found this little dude,

We truly loved every single day we visited the Angkor Archaeological Park! It was really nice to take our time and absorb all that majestic beauty!

Building up our expectations to Angkor Wat: The impressive Bayon Temple

After the Ta Prohm temple we visited the impressive Bayon Temple. Normally when visiting Angkor people head immediately to the Angkor Wat temple but we decided to visit all the surrounding temples and finish with a majestic sun rising in the Angkor Wat temple.

The most impressive feature of the Bayon temple are the massive stone faces,

 What really impressed us was the detail in the stone sculptures, 

Trying to take some artistic pictures :)

Traditional dancers,

 Antonio's nice t-shirt,

Walls and walls of sculptures depicting historical events and scenes from the everyday life of the Angkorian Khmer,

After Bayon we headed to the Terrace of the Elephants from where king Jayavarman VII viewed his victorious returning army,

Buddhist monks enjoying the temples,

 

 A legion of tuk-tuk drivers waiting for their tourists,

Time to bike back to the hotel and rest!!! :) there was still 4 more days of exploration to go :)