Sunday was our big day of temple touring around the Angkor complex. We started early and went straight to Angkor Thom (literally, The Large City). After passing through the south gate, we kicked off at Bayon. Bayon is a magnificent structure, built by the prolific Jayavarman VII, contains some fifty towers, each topped with four faces. 
As you wind through the temple structure, the towers continue to unveil themselves creating a very dramatic setting. The space is tight, though, so it’s impossible to ever get a true feel for the scale of the entire temple. We also got a taste for the crowds… unlike yesterday when we had the temples to ourselves, at Bayon it was bus tour central!
Heading north out of Bayon, we walked quickly through Baphuon and then climbed up to the top of Phimeanakas (or at least Matt and Matt K did). It was pretty hot at the time, but once at the top there was a nice breeze – which made it almost all worth it. The sun was something fierce, so we were anxious to get back to the car and air conditioning. On the way, we made a quick tour around the Elephant Terrace and the Terrace of the Leper King. That was it for Angkor Thom; we all grabbed some much needed water and then drove out the North gate to see two more temples before lunch (we’re ambitious). 
First was at Prah Khan. A sprawling temple complex with two long corridors intersecting in the middle (forming a plus sign essentially). There are some great relief carvings around the temple, and on the back side there are some trees growing through the temple (though, nothing compared Ta Prohm, which we're going to see tomorrow). 
Our last stop before lunch was Neak Pean. This is a very different complex than the others we've toured - a central temple surrounded by a square pond with four more ponds, one on each side. Our guide told us that each pond had healing powers of some kind - so if you were ill, you would come here and drink from the appropriate pond. Today, since the ponds are all dry, he said people might just eat some of the vegetation from the pond instead.We pushed our guide to take us to the Khmer Kitchen for lunch since Matt K had heard great things about it in his guide book. We were not disappointed. Between the five of us, we covered a good mix of Khmer food - curry, amok and lok lak. And it was all delicious - all for about $3 each. If you're in Siem Reap, definitely go to the Khmer Kitchen. After lunch, we went back to the hotel to rest poolside.
Around 3pm we met up with our guide again and returned to Angkor Wat, this time to tour it properly. Having a guide isn't really necessary if you only want to experience the architecture and grandeur of the place, but it really allows you to explore the reliefs and understand how the temple evolved into what's there today. Our guide did a great job of telling us the stories in the reliefs around the sides of the temple. We were hoping to get the good sunset view of Angkor Wat today (Angkor Wat is the only temple that faces west, so it reflects the light from the setting sun), but the clouds moved in thick... just like yesterday. Since it looked like it was going to rain we just jumped back in the van and returned to the hotel. 
For dinner tonight, we chose a modern twist on Khmer/Asian food - AHA. AHA is a tapas place in the Be hotel (crazy, only 3 rooms). Half of the menu was modern Khmer, while the rest was a broader Asian interpretation. We tried just about everything on the menu, and it was all very good. We walked around downtown Siem Reap for a bit, and swung by Angkor What? to grab a drink before returning to the hotel for the night. We felt a bit out of place sitting in the bar, watching the scene around Pub Street. I guess we're getting old.
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