We were up early in order to start our days touring at 7:00 am. This area is a major tourist destination getting somewhere between 2 and 5 million visitors per year depending on the source of that information. So the early start was to beat the crowds and heat.

It became obvious almost immediately that we had not done enough research regarding the ruins and this area. While we knew the name of the first temple we visited, Angkor Wat we had never heard the names Tonle Om and Angkor Tom, or Ta Prom which were the subsequent places we visited. Furthermore in these blog entries I usually try to piece together a short narrative that explains to me the essense of what I saw. But this place has defeated me; it is just too big (the UNESCO World Heritage Area is 400 sq km) and too complex (I could not find a source to tell me how many significant ruins or complexes other than "dozens") to summarise in a page.

So lets be brief. This place is mind bendingly large, the quality and quantity of the construction and carving has to be seen to be believed. It all speaks of incredible wealth (and power)in the past.

On a relative minor engineering point I was delighted to find the apparatus displayed in photos 17 and 18 which demonstrate how stone blocks are ground so that they fit tightly together.