We caught a bright and early flight out of Laos’ capital city, Vientiane and arrived a couple hours 
later in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Our objective: tour the famed Temples of Angkor. Now, we have seen quite a few Wats in our travels, but none of them even holds a candle to these babies. First off, these temples were built several hundred years ago (around 800 – 1400AD) and rediscovered in the not too distant past by French explorers. Even more significant is that they and the surrounding ancient city grounds covered about 3000 square kilometers and were home to a population of around two million people, at a time when the city of London had only about 50,000.
later in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Our objective: tour the famed Temples of Angkor. Now, we have seen quite a few Wats in our travels, but none of them even holds a candle to these babies. First off, these temples were built several hundred years ago (around 800 – 1400AD) and rediscovered in the not too distant past by French explorers. Even more significant is that they and the surrounding ancient city grounds covered about 3000 square kilometers and were home to a population of around two million people, at a time when the city of London had only about 50,000.
With only two days to explore, we hired a car along with a couple other tourists (from Milwaukee) we met on the plane to take us around the first day so we could get our bearings. We explored about five different temples/structures, including Ta Prohm—the “Jungle Temple” featured in Tomb Raider, and ended the day by hiking to the top of the “mountain” to watch the sun set over the ruins. The second day, we decided to go it on our own and bike around the Grand Loop to see some of the temples a bit further out after first stopping at the most famous temple of all, Angkor Wat. That was a really cool experience…ok, actually it was an extremely HOT experience as temps were around 100F both days, but definitely worth it.
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