The hardest part of this blog post is going to be which of the hundreds of pictures we took to share.  Seeing Angkor Wat and it’s surrounding temples was a top five moment for us on our trip.  We did our research and took three whole days to explore, so we didn’t feel rushed, too tired, and we had plenty of time left in the day to explore the famous Pub Street in town.  Our hotel hooked us up with a tuk tuk driver who picked us up everyday and took us out to the temples we wanted to see.  He even had an itinerary in mind that closely mirrored what we wanted to see anyway, so we sat back and let him drive us around, starting with buying our passes into the Temples.  A three day pass cost $40 U.S. each and was worth every penny.

I wish we had gotten a picture with our driver.  He was the nicest guy, always smiling, always ready to take us to our next spot…he knew when we needed a break and the best places for those breaks.  We decided that the Cambodian people in general were the nicest people we met on our trip, always smiling, willing to help, never pushy.  The horrors they’ve endured over the years made all that even more impressive.

He would pick us up around 8 am and we would visit 2-3 temple a day and at each one, we had to show our three day pass to enter.  We would save the big temple, Angkor Wat, for the last day.

We passed rice fields while going from one temple to another.

One of the temples required us to walk out onto a narrow wooden walkway because it was located in the middle of a lake and was now a sunken temple.

We visited Ta Phrom, otherwise known as the temple used in the background of the Tomb Raider movies.  It was packed and hard to get pictures.

Day three was the main event, Angkor Wat.  The parking lot was madness.  A lot of people come here just for this temple alone and don’t see any of the rest of the compound, which is a shame.

This picture was taken while we were in Phnom Penh, at the presidential palace.  It’s a model of the entire complex of Angkor Wat, just to give you an idea of the scale of the worlds largest religious building.

At the end of each day of temple trekking, we’d go out to the main street in town, called Pub Street.

It’s called Pub Street because of all the Pubs and it’s where everyone goes to unwind after a hot day of exploring the temples.  And it helped that the beers only cost 50 cents.

It was a fitting end to our time in Southeast Asia.  We hadn’t planned on spending almost four months in this region of the world, but we loved every second of it.  We had decided that it was time to move on and explore more of the world so we booked a flight to Europe…