After so many temples which seemed to look alike after a while, I was more than ready to just stop and rest for the day. We got to Elephant Terrace and the Leper King Terrace where the renmants of the carvings remained. It was very dusty in Siem Reap and the soil was orangey-red. Interesting. We also saw elephants which were available for visitors to ride on to explore the ruins. I guessed elephants were still an important part of life in Cambodia.
We could probably have gone on to more temples like Bakheng where you could get an aerial view of the ruins (we didn't know that until the next day) but we were just so tired that we told our fantastic guide we just wanted to go to Ta Prohm and be done with the temples. We had already decided beforehand that it would be quite impossible to do everything and the two "must visit" places were Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm so we just focused on those.
At Ta Prohm (of Tomb Raider fame), we saw more tourists and Cambodian children and ladies trying to sell souvenirs and things to tourists. While I felt for them, it could get a bit annoying as you could hardly walk a step without them blocking your path.
It was quite humbling to see the ruins being engulfed by some trees and knowing these have been around for centuries and that life goes on. Time will pass and soon everything will be history.
Can you spot the apsara dancer hidden within the roots of the tree in the bottom left picture? The guide pointed that out to us and I used the zoom function to capture the image. Otherwise most would have missed it.
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