The gate is stunning. Once inside, we climbed to the top of the wall along rocks and packed dirt. There's no stairs going up, but reaching the top of the wall affords excellent photos of the gate, as well as the beautiful path through the jungle along the top of the wall.
From there we got back in the small bus and headed to Bayon Temple, Baphoun Temple, the Royal Temple, and ended at the Elephant Terrace as the heat and humidity was getting to me. The end came at the right time for me!
Honestly, I don't even remember going to four temples -- I remember Bayon, the Royal Temple, and the Elephant Terrace, but I don't recall Baphoun Temple. However, I believe Bun when he tells me we went to all four!
After some explanation from Dat, Carol went off to explore Bayon on our own. It was fun walking around the temple on our own, seeing different sections. A security worker showed us around a bit, mostly through hand motions and a smattering of English (still better than our Cambodian language skills), so we ended up giving him a couple dollars (don't worry, the dollars were clean and crisp!).
We ran into the rest of the group, who were following Dat around, right about the time we ran into the monkeys. We were warned not to approach them (I'm no dummy, wouldn't approach wild animals in the wild). There were claims the monkeys had rabies, but I didn't see any indications of rabies. I think Dat was claiming rabies to scare us into not getting close to the monkeys.
I saw a monkey grab onto a guy's loosely hanging shirt because he was peeling an orange, which he quickly gave to the monkey.
The Bayon was built in the late 12th and early 13th century, it is best known for its many serenely smiling stone faces of the Buddha. on every side of the towers that dot the temple.
Now I understand my confusion -- I thought the Baphoun Temple was the Royal Temple, but it is not. I think.
Anyhow, at one of the temples, a number of the group climbed to the top -- given the status of my left knee, I decided to pass. Instead I went to look at the alleged reclining Buddha, which is barely recognizable. (Spoiler alert: It's not at all recognizable -- just a pile of stones). When Dat pointed it out to us, we were all disappointed. Then when we who didn't go up pointed it out to the others who climbed up, they were disappointed too. Totally underwhelming!)
We also watched some screeching gibbons in a couple of trees. Then we wandered around some more ruins, including the Elephant Terrace.
No one wanted to travel the hour each way to spend an hour at the floating village, so that was the end of the trip, with the exception of lunch and dinner together, and some afternoon downtime.
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