Saturday, January 4, 2014

Angkor What? (By Luke)

      It felt good to be back in a tuktuk even if we were a little squished. The last time we were in a tuktuk was around 11 months ago in Thailand. Now we were in a tuktuk at 8:00 in the morning on our way to Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  It was already crowded with people so early in the morning!






Angkor Wat is one of the biggest temples in the world and arguably the most fascinating. There was just stone everything. Angkor Wat was not easy to build, it didn't haveenough rock material so they used elephants to carry the rocks down from the mountains.  We walked in and were speechless. It wasn't exactly the most beautiful, but it was big. We got a tour guide who taught us plenty. He said that the holy numbers for the Khmer and the Temple (Wat means temple) were 3 for the amount of gods, 5 for the number of senses, 7 for the amount of days of the week and the number of chakra (spiritual parts of your body), 9 for the number of planets, and 12 for the number of hours in the day and months in a year. This is why there were lots of patterns with these numbers. Another crazy thing about Angkor Wat is that there are tons of little designs on the walls everywhere. They all have their own meaning! We also got to stand in the so called Middle of The Universe. I felt peaceful there.



    We then sat down and our tour guide read our palms. I wasn't very happy with him though because he said that my father will always be wiser and smarter than me. I chose not to believe him.




The boys went up to the highest part of Angkor Wat called the Upper Gallery where we could see all of Angkor Wat. It was awesome. There is a huge moat around Angkor Wat which was all handmade. Angkor Wat is 500 acres and was built in 37 years in the early 12th century. Every family sent someone to work on Angkor Wat - if you didn't send a family member, your family would be killed!  Over a million slaves worked on it until the King's temple was complete.

    Angkor Wat is said to be one of the coolest things ever at sunrise. So a week after our first visit we decided to see for ourselves. It was really crowded at the lake which was supposed to be an amazing picture. We were a little annoyed when it was cloudy and you could barely see the sun. We woke up at 4:45 in the morning to see Angkor Wat at sunrise, but all we saw was Angkor Wat and clouds. We were all really tired but we would remember it. Angkor Wat was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

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