Angkor Wat

One of the man-made wonders of the world, Angkor Wat is a CITY. It's a huge city of temples, which is what the name means.

It's awe-inspiring, which is what Mattias kept calling it, even on the first day when we hadn't even made it in the front door of the main temple.

It's a city made of enormous temples a gazillion years ago. Almost every piece of stone used to build it is intricately carved. It's beautiful. It took so long to build the thing that there are two completely different styles of architecture it's comprised of.

We arrived at 4:30 am, to see the sunrise. We spent 3 hours in just the main temple alone, as Tonia and Mattias are voracious documentarians, positioning all of us here and there, just right, so that we could have a photo of every angle. I''m making this sound like a negative here, I know, but I didn't feel that way at all. I got to appreciate every nook and cranny of the two temples of many that we had the strength to see, and besides, now I have a hundred pics of myself to prove I was actually there. One of the downfalls of traveling alone is that you're barely in any photo.

It's getting hotter and hotter, we're walking and walking, and by 10:30 I've had it. The heat at that point was pretty intense, and the sun was starting to break through. I noticed later on how much different I looked from 5 am to 10... my hair was much puffier, and so was my face- the humidity which I don't fare well in was taking its toll.

By 11 am, I couldn't see any more. I now understood why people get a three-day pass. You just can't see that much for a long period of time. It's overwhelming and hot.

We barely scratched the surface.

I shouldn've come back the next morning, as yesterday I thought I was going to die if I saw any more, and now I'm regretting that I didn't see enough.

I wasn't as impressed by Angkor Wat as everyone else was. Maybe this is because I am easily pleased, but not easily impressed. Don't get me wrong. It was enjoyable. And spectacular. And I'm really glad I saw it. Cambodian architecture is very unique and beautiful. Maybe it's because I've seen Teotihuacan in Mexico, the Coliseum in Rome... I'm not enough of a history buff to really appreciate all the minor details. Maybe it's because the one time we needed a guide, we couldn't find one.

Or perhaps, more simply, because it wasn't shiny. I REALLY like shiny.