Feb 22nd - Ankor

Ankor is composed of hundeds of buildings, the biggest two are the palace of Ankor Wot and the ancient, walled city of Ankor Thom. These magnificant places took up most of our first day.
Ankor Wot is, as I said, a palace. It is huge and quiet charasmatic. There are statues from Hinduism and later, Budhism, all around. There are several floors and interesting steps to climb.
The most interesting part of Ankor Wot is a massive wall sculpting that carries on for a few meters. It depicts a hindu legend called the churning of the sea of milk: the hindu vision of creation.
Ankor Thom has a gateway full of giant stone heads, that is quite breathtaking. As you enter the inside of the walles there are several cool places to see. My favorite two are the elephant terrace and the terrace of the leper king. These are full of interesting carvings which cover the walls depicting sword swallowers, dancers and nobles.
We were exhausted by then, it was time for lunch. The restaurant was full of hens and chicks runnning about, it seemed more like a farm house than a restaurant. After food all we wanted to do was sleep, we had done a lot of walking, evening was setting in. The driver returned us to our dodgy hotel and we fell into a semi-comatoze state for a few hours. The driver took us down town later on that night and left us at the blue pumpkin for a night of drinking.
We sampled Siam Reap's range of cocktails and headed back to our dodgy hotel.