This is probably something of a record for visitors to Siam Reap: I've already been here for almost two weeks and have only now seen the temples of Angkor! Well, I figured they wouldn't go away and besides I wanted to avoid going on the weekend when thousands of Cambodians visit Angkor in addition to the foreign tourists. But I'm telling you: the temples are really are as wonderful, serene and awe-inspiring as everybody says!

Unfortunately you will have to wait for a bit longer until I'll be able to upload any pictures - most of the internet places here charge a dollar per uploaded or downloaded file and I simply refuse to pay so much money for something I can get for free in Phnom Penh or anywhere else. But I digress:

The temples are really, really great. It is actually a bit hard to describe them (and I'm gonna upload pictures anyhow) but what makes them imho so impressive is that they are at the same time both massive and huge and very delicate. There is nothing raw or primitive about them; the carvings and the reliefs are incredibly fine and detailed while the towers leap to heights that rival Europes cathedrals.

The thing that I found most memorable though, were the faces of Angkor: The Khmer built huge (like ten or twelve meters) high faces, that are probably a composite of one of their kings and the face of Buddha, on their gates, temples and towers. And they didn't just built one face, but almost always groups of four identical faces, looking at each direction of the sky. In one temple you have 54 towers with 216 of these faces - it's really quite spooky! And you definitely do feel watched!

The second thing I found more impressive then anything else was of course the famous trees in the jungle-temples. While Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and a lot of other temples have been cleared of the jungle, a few of them, like Ta Prohm, have mainly been left as they had been found by the archaeologists; i.e. in the grip of vegetation that had 500 years of time to take possession of the temples. So what you see are 50 meter high trees that grow through temples; gigantic specimen that have roots so large that they manage to encompass whole buildings...you can't help but stand their and say: "Wow!"