CAMBODIA DAY 2 🇰🇭 | Angkor Wat Sunrise, Tomb Raider Temple & Bayon Temple | Siem Reap Vlog

It's day two here in Cambodia and today is going to be a full day of exploring. We started our morning at 5am because today's big adventure begins with one of Cambodia's most iconic sights, the Angkor Wat. Our driver picked us up from the hotel while it was still dark outside and we headed straight to get our day passes to the Angkor Wat. The Cambodia, the morning early is the cold and then afternoon is very hot. Yeah. The morning early, the people you see the sunrise a lot. Yeah. And they go, they go away. Yeah. You go to the temple like this and then you go to next temple. Yeah. Every temple, even if it's big or small temple, it always have the moat, the waters go all the way around the temple. So this water, we call moat and it's not natural. Yeah. It's man-made moat and it goes all the way around the temple. But the water, it's supposed to help the land flow? Yeah, yeah. They help protect the foundation of the building because underneath of the temple, they compact sand with water. So sand always needs water to support, you know? Yeah. In European country, it's called protection the enemy. Yeah. But here in Cambodia, it's protection but protection the foundation, you know? Oh, okay. Because this is a religious building and it's not the palace, it's not place for the king live or sleep here, you know? It's the place for worshipping or praying. Because Cambodia back then through the ancient time, we got influenced by the Hindu religion. Yeah. I can finally see your face. Eating some breakfast at the Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Look, this is so cute. So we got our breakfast from the hotel. They packed this thing for us. It comes with two hard-boiled eggs and some sausage and bacon and tons of bread. Lot of bread. Okay. We are here in temple chasing sunrise. Sunrise is coming up and very soon. Probably like five more minutes. But this is just bringing back the memories when we were in our chess in Utah. We have to wake up early today, like around 4.30. We woke up at 4.30. 4 o'clock. Yeah, we woke up at 4 o'clock. But at least this one is not that bad. Compared to our chess. Because in our chess, we have to be less. Yeah. And we have to hit up the trail. There's like 20-minute trail going to the Mesa Arch. But this one is just like a flat walk to the beautiful temple. It is so nice. A lot of people right now. But it's not as crazy as the one that we see on Instagram or else though. Sunrise is coming. So right now we can see the details. The sun is coming and we start exploring. Two times a year. In March and in September. You can look back a little bit right now. You can see the sun shining back to the temple. It looks golden color, you know. Yeah, it's beautiful. And this platform in the front here, it used to be the dancing hall, you know. It is the place where they have celebrated the Apsara dancing show. And the dancing is not done to entertain anyone. It's just a sacred dance, a holy spiritual dance. And Angkor Wat, you know, originally was the Hindu temple. It was built from the early of 12th century. From the 12th century to now, the temple is more than 900 years already, you know. It's Hindu, built dedicated to Vishnu God. But later on, in the late of 12th century, it changed to Buddhist, you know. So when the Buddhist king coming, he has to replace Hindu and put the Buddha status instead. Cambodia from the 12th century is Hindu-Buddhist-Hindu-Buddhist and conflict. They have fight. They have destroyed each other. And start from 16th century to now, the whole country of Cambodia changed from Hindu to Buddhist. Oh, okay. And now it's about 90% of Cambodian people, they are in the Buddhist religion. But a lot of Hindu celebration, like mixed together. It's the way that they open for the tourists to go up there. And before they have the Hindu Vishnu statue. But now it's only Buddha. Because right now, Buddhist religion, it become the official state religion in Cambodia. You will see the four standing Buddha. And you also can see the returning Buddha. We are in Angkor Wat right now. And there's a part over here that you can go up and see the tallest tower. But we're not doing that thing today. After spending the morning exploring Angkor Wat, it's time for a little shopping. And I have to say, shopping was probably the most expensive activity we did in Cambodia. Not because we're buying anything crazy. But because everything seemed to be priced in US dollars. Is that real? Yeah, it's a real snake inside. What do you think it is? What is this supposed to be? That is symbolize the male organ, fertility. Yeah, it looks like a penis. And the star is the female organ. So in Hindu religion, they have believed if they take the water flow on the linga. And the water flow here, they get the water to drink, to wash their face, drink good luck. Because all people in the universe, they create from all of this. So if you're planning a trip to Cambodia, just be prepared to pull out those dollars. And of course, somehow we still managed to find the new things we needed to take home with us. After our little shopping stop, it was time to continue our temple hopping adventure. We still had two more temples to visit. Our next stop was Angkor Thom. This place is incredible, especially when you see how nature was slowly taking over some of this ancient structure. It is 12 meters high. All the way back to the top of the Angkor Thom village, where they destroy and they take out all Hindu religion. It's 200 years, 250 or 300 years, you know? Yes. And the government, they cannot cut down the tree because if they cut the tree, the temple will collapse. This is the big one. The massive century-old trees growing above the ruins and those enormous roots wrapping themselves around the stone structures make the whole place look like something straight out of a movie. And speaking of movies, some of this location may look familiar because Angkor Thom was featured in the movie Tomb Raider. Standing here in person, you can definitely understand why the filmmaker chose this place. There's something about seeing this ancient ruins surrounded by massive trees that makes you feel like you've stepped into another world. So probably they found some evidence of horses. And then we made our way to our final temple of the day, the Bayon Temple. This was probably one of my favorites because of all the incredibly intricate carvings. It's the same asura but here they are dancing. If you see the pose of finger they put like this, it means they put the seed in the ground. And then the seed will grow up and become young leaf. And leaf. And after leaf, everything will blossom. Flower. And after flower, it will become fruit. And ripe fruit. And the fruit absolutely like fall back to the ground and the seed will grow up again. The meaning of the Apsara dancing here in Cambodia, it symbolizes the cycle of life. Apsara. Everywhere you look there are details carved into the stone and you can spend so much time just walking around trying to take everything in. By this point, you were definitely feeling the heat and the exhaustion from waking up at 5 in the morning. But honestly, looking at these temples make you forget how tired you are. All the temples we visited today were absolutely amazing. And I kept thinking, just imagine what this place must have looked like during the height of Khmer Empire. These massive structures, the people who built them, an incredible amount of work that went into every single carving. It's hard to believe that all of this was created centuries ago. And I'm really glad we decided to hire a tour guide. He shared so much history and information about the Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and Bayan Temple. And it gave us a much better appreciation of what we were actually looking at. Without the guide, we probably would have just walked around, taken pictures, and said, wow, this is beautiful. But knowing the story behind these places made the experience so much more meaningful. They pour the water and they wrap like this. But just imagine a million tons, a million pieces of stone. They're wrapped together and how many people worked on this. So you push, you push down. It's easy. Let's push like this. Cannot. Easy. And you push this one. Yeah. Actually, they put this under this one and it makes it higher. And with that, our temple adventures ends here. Because apparently, we still have more of Cambodia to explore.