lacey makes: Thailand Trip (part 1 of hopefully only 3)

We just got home this past Saturday morning from the best (really the only) 2 week vacation of our lives thus far. For the sake of you probably needing to get some things done today, I won't include all 550 pictures we took - just the highlights!

We left Seoul on the night of the 9th on a 5 hour flight to Cambodia. Needless to say, after foraging through customs and entry visa counters after that we weren't in the best spirits; especially since we had to wake up at 4 am for our sunrise tour to begin.

We hired a tour guide for about $65 for the day. Best $65 I've ever spent. Our guide, Mr. Mony, picked us up at 4:40am and took us to see Angkor Wat in front of the sunrise. He knew what he was doing too, because he had us there before anyone else so we had "front row seats". We were so exhausted, but we couldn't argue once the sun started coming up.

One of my favorite pictures from the trip.

Mr. Mony took us back to our hotel so we could have a breakfast (and a short nap) and then we set out again to tour the other surrounding temples. The temples are one in a dozen here in Siem Reap. Back in the day, each King would build a temple as beautiful as he could in hopes that the Gods would wish to live there. The Kings also believed that if they served well enough they would come back as Gods and get to live in their wonderful temples.

Angkor Wat is the biggest of the temples we saw (and I believe its the most iconic). It took about 35 years to build from solid stone transported in from a mountain 25 miles away. It's amazing that the people who built such a structure had the knowledge to build it.

The temple was abandoned before it was completely decorated. The two pictures below show an Aspara dancer that has been outlined to be carved, and what the finished carving would look like.

Also another half started carving. The bottom part is what the whole column would eventually look like. It's amazing that it was all done by hand.

Wild monkeys! We had such a blast watching them.

Next we saw Angkor Thom, where the King who built it believed that by putting faces at all four sides of each tower his temple would be looked after at all times.

The two following are at the Dead Gate. Also where Tomb Raider was filmed. (Yes, we watched the movie right after we left.)

We braked for lunch and had a fresh coconut and some amazing food.

The next two photos are at Ta Nei, which has mostly collapsed.

The last temple we visited was my favorite. Ta Prohm. It was finished in the late 12th century and after being abandoned the trees have taken over. I'll let the photos do the talking. It was truly a magnificent place.