Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat

We've have visited some big ancient ruins of the Mayans such as Chitzen Itza and Coba, and they were quite spectacular, and granted, they are older than these but it is the enormity of the temples of Angkor that is almost overwhelming.  I had read quite a bit about the place but I still was not prepared for all of this, and we just saw one small portion.  There has been a lot of restoration work done over the last fifty years or so, with interuptions for wars and other conflicts.  A lot of the work has been done by foreign interests, France, China, Japan, and others, either due to a guilty conscience for misdemeanors wrought against Cambodia or in hope of a bigger share of natural resources.
The number of tourists here is also boggling, I mentioned yesterday about all the large modern hotels and resorts.  Well all those rooms get filled and all those tourists have one main destinations, and that is to the temples.  It was busy when we arrived this morning but when we left there were hundreds of tour buses in the parking lots, and most of them would have been filled by Korean and Japanese tourists.  There are plenty of western tourists too, and we saw so many of them touring the ruins on their own.  After doing it with a guide, I think these people are losing out on a great deal of the experience.  The details that they are able to show you, and the stories that they can describe from the thousands of intricate carvings, you just would not see by reading a guidebook.  Here is one example; conflict in this region is nothing new, the rulers of the land alternated between Buddhist and Hindu many times.  We were in the Bayon temple where there were a whole series of wall carvings.  Our guide showed us the outline of the original carving and it's typical Buddha form.  After a hindu takeover the Buddha was scraped smooth and replaced by a hindu carving.  However the tall Buddha towers were not destroyed, but a third hindu eye was added to each of them (I do not know the proper term for the forehead spot of the hindus, sorry)

Hindu eye on the Buddha forehead

I could go on and on with pictures etc, but it would get very long winded so I will just put up a couple more of the Angkor Wat temple and save the rest for home.

We had a choice of hanging around for about two hours for sunset over the temples, or skip it and go back to the hotel.  We were hot and tired, so we did the skip it option, choosing instead a poolside lounger and beer.

We're 2nd floor, behind the two short palm trees

We went back downtown for supper tonight, it was tasty but overpriced and non-filling, so we went for a post dinner drink and snack at the Red Piano bar, locally famous as Angelina Jolie's hangout during the filming of tomb raider.  Good place to people watch too.  Tomorrow we will visit the Angkor sites that were featured in the movie. 
A night market stroll, a tuk tuk home, and soon to bed.  We have a dinner reservation tomorrow at a place recommended by our guide that does a buffet supper followed by some traditional performances.  The price was good and a lot of people were coming out as we drove past tonight on our way home.