Cambodia 1

Last week my parents came to visit me! I was so very excited to see them after being apart for almost 2 years. The day after they arrived we went to Cambodia. We went to the city of Siem Reap where the famous temples of Angkor Wat are located. Angkor Wat is said to be the world's largest single religious monument. These temples were built over a period of 300 years, between 900 and 1200 AD. The city has more than 200 temples in it. They were rediscovered by the western world in the late 1800s. Unfortunately, many of them were destroyed during the time of the Khmer Rouge. Also, many of the statues were beheaded by the starving and impoverished village people and sold to other countries in the 1980s. They are simply the most amazing temples I have ever seen. They are unbelievably huge and detailed. The top picture is of my parents and I posing in front of the most famous temple known as Angkor Wat. It is massive! The second picture is of my parents in front of one of the many gates. The third picture is my parents sitting in a window of one of my favorite temples known as Preah Khan. It was incredibly destroyed, but it was a maze of door ways and passages. Once inside this temple you were kept cool from the heat outside. The last two pictures are of my favorite temple known as Bayon. This temple is covered in over 200 of these large stone faces depicting Lokeshvara, a Buddhist deity that projected benevolence outward to the four directions.