Cambodia is a pretty tough place to travel through, so we took the easy route and flew in and out of Siem Reap, the home of the temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia's biggest tourist spot. It is listed as a "must see" by lots of people and I wasn't disappointed.
The first day we went to the floating village where these people spend their entire lives living on boats in this very small community on a large lake. They have a basketball court, church, restaurants, houses, all floating on a lake. Totally unique.
Here's some pictures:
Naked kids helping their mom with something -
It's hard to see the ropes but this guy is towing his whole house with that little boat in front.
A little girl that wanted to sell us some bananas. (We went for a Coke and Sprite instead)
The second day we visited the temples at Angkor with our guide, Surat. He did a good job of explaining everything that we saw as we went along. Our first stop was also my favorite of the temples that we visited. It was built in the 14th century but the jungle overgrew it a few hundred years later so that it would be hidden from the invading Siamese. It wasn't uncovered until the 1800's by French explorers. In the time that the jungle overgrew it, dirt was piled up all around the walls and buildings, giving trees a chance to take root. When the French found it the trees had formed these massive roots that grew into the buildings and walls. They cut some of it out but found that the buildings depend on the roots to stay standing, so most of them were left in place.
Here you can see where they cut the roots out but then had to reinforce the wall since it started to collapse-
The crazy green pond at one end of the temple-
After that we stopped at another temple before going to Angkor Wat. All the stones that you see laid out are tagged with a number. The French were attempting to restore a temple so they took it apart, carefully labeling each piece and keeping a diagram of how to put it back together. Then there was some war (this area of the world has been plagued by them) and the documents of how it goes together were burned and nobody knew how to put them all back together. Apparently they are now digitaling analyzing them and using computers to try and figure out how to put it back together. The moral of the story...always backup your data.
Finally, some pictures of Angkor Wat itself:
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