Siem Reap: Gracie's Angkor Day

Siem Reap, Cambodia

We may fall off the face of the Earth tomorrow, but once we were at Angkor Wat.
(Family with Anita's sister, Karen, and cousin Lauryn.)

Gracie's Blog: On Thursday we woke up at 4:00 am and then we got into our van with our guide to drive to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise. It was so beautiful. Carrie and Lauryn kept on taking pictures. Then they went down to a little grass beach and started throwing rocks to take pictures of the ripples very quickly because they were trying to make a stop motion video. Some other people were taking pictures and video of the sunrise. Some were even going inside the temple. It took a long time for the sun to rise, but finally it did. I thought it was delighting to see the new sun of the day. 

After breakfast we went to Praeh Khan, one of the temples that are very old. We learned a lot about how they build it and what kind of people were the statues of. We went along very quickly but slowly to see stuff. We saw a lot of broke stone. Then we also saw a lot of these Buddha altars where you could light incense and put it in this grey sand and pray or meditate. Then before we left out guide showed us a tower we could go up on to to see a beautiful site. Then when we went back down to go to the van we passed the dancing hall. Then, after we took some pictures of the carvings and us doing the dance poses the carvings were of we went back down to the van. I thought it was very very lovely. 

One of the things I really didn't like about yesterday was our mean parents driving us all around just to make us go to an interesting but boring and hot temple. 

We ate dinner at the marketplace. Before dinner Dad and I went looking around to see what we could get. We passed a scarf place and there were small scarves that were $1 each. Then she changed the prices because the owner of the scarves was very desperate. Then Dad said that we would come back later. After that situation we went back to eat our dinner. It was good. We had spring rolls and rice and my Aunt Karen has some coconut juice. After dinner when some people were done I went over to my Aunt Karen to ask her how to bargain, which we could do there because there were such low prices. She taught me some things about bargaining: when you go over to a thing, you can can ask the price. Then you should scowl and say that's too much then you should put it down slowly and walk away and they might come back to you and say I'll lower this to blah, blah, blah. Then you can try to change the price again, and if they don't go for it you can just walk away again. They might come back to you again and you can go back-and-forth like that until you get the price that you really want.

To keep up with the parade of events, here are some of the lingering impressions of the Angkor Temple complex.

Angkor Wat:

Ta Prohm

Angkor Thom South Gate

Bayon of Angkor Thom

Praeh Khan