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| After Phnom Penh we travelled north to the temples of Angkor. The first was Angkor Wat, surrounded by a moat 200 meters across and a mile long on each side. Here the temple itself is framed in one of the snake railings that once wound its way all around the compound.
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| Angkor Wat has a number of Buddha sculptures user for daily prayers.
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| Work is ongoing to restore Angkor Wat.
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| Every surface is carved. Fences are surmounted with snakes.
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| Flat surfaces are engraved in bas relief representations of Hindu myths.
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| The four outer walls of Angkor Wat itself are covered in bas relief. Here we see half of one wall. I imagined myself as a carver starting at one end of a blank wall. Here is my hammer and here my chisel. "Tink, tink."
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| Stairs to the highest level of the temple were quite steep.
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| The carving is often quite intricate. The strings here are something to do with restoration work.
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| On each side of the path to the temple is a "library" like this one.
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| At dawn, I climbed to the top, but got no really interesting pictures.
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| Dawn finally broke when I was back down from the top.
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| The next day we visited Angkor Thom, the temple usually shown as overrun by the "jungle." But I would call it a forest; it is quite open.
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| The trees have even moved some of the pieces of the temple.
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| This last temple, Ta Prohm, is Buddhist. It features at least forty huge images of Buddha on the four faces of each of ten towers.
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| A modern Buddha near the old ones.
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| Leaving the temples area we went through the gate and over the bridge of gods and demons. Here are gods, smiling.
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| Demons are always shown scowling.
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