The Bayon Temples, Cambodia

We went to the Bayon temple early to photograph the soft yellow morning light on some of the 37 stone heads. The heads depicted figures from Buddhist mythology and were very striking to look at. The temple comlex itself was also architecturally impressive. After wandering around we found a monkey sat on one of the stones and several people were having their picture taken with it so I did as well! It was quite old, and just relaxing in the sun.

We went around Angkor Thom and saw the Terrace of the Elephants which included several walls of sculpted elephants. The time and detail it must have taken was amazing. On the drive back we saw lots of monkeys sitting around by the trees which were funny to watch. The baby monkeys were quite cheeky and came right up to me looking for food. We also saw elephants carrying people to and from the temple.

After lunch our tuk tuk driver took us out to Bakong (13km east) - one of the older temples of Angkor. Other than a tourist bus which came and went, we practically had the whole temple to ourselves. It was set in a really beautiful location with palm trees and a huge moat around the outside. There was also interesting brick buildings around the outside of the temple with big holes in for cooking and a tall chimney. The outer wall was covered in funnel webs, which was interesting to see.

It was another really hot day today so by this point we were both quite tired, but stopped off at Banteay Kdei to take some pictures of stone carvings and then briefly onto Ta Prohm, where the surrounding jungles contain nearly deafening birds, that make a continual high pitched, shrieking sounds. It took us ages to work out the strange sound was birds, we heard it on and off for the last few days. We returned back to our guesthouse for food after a long and exhausting day.