Angkor Who?? Angkor Wat

So after Vang Vieng we headed to the capital city of Laos, Vientene. Which was a total bust. After VV, Vientene was a freaking boar. Matt Lauer lied to me. Where he should have went on the Today show was VV... but i guess a lot of young hippies floating down the river doing drugs doesn't make for great tv for people that get up early enough to watch the Today show. The town has some cool french stuff... like a lot of french buildings and a street that looks like the Champs Elysse and a really big arch thing like the Arch de Triumph (the US gave a lot of cement to Laos to build a new airport... so instead they built this big ass arch thing... i don't know). We flew out to Siem Riep in Cambodia which is the tourist hub for Angkor Wat. Ends up that Cambodia is freaking expensive (ok... that is just going by my cheap ass SE Asian standards). They use the US dollar as their currency and that means that you get screwed. They only use the paper money... so a bottle of water costs 1 dollar.. i much prefer my 10-15 cent bottle of water. And did i mention that Cambodia is hot as balls and just as sweaty. So we flew into Cambodia at around 10am and decided that we should check out AW that day.... and a 3 day pass costs $40 US. But whatever... its Angkor wat. So we go see the main temples and about pass out because its so hot... like a sweaty jungle type hot! But the temples were out of this world. They were so freaking incredible... they had so much detail and are just so old. They are suppose to have the most impressive Bas Reliefs in the world. I dont know what those are but it sounds pretty impressive (im not into art at all but i think a bas relief is like a mural carved into the wall or something like that). The next temple that we saw was Banyon... and it is so cool. There are all these faces carved everywhere into it (the picture of me sitting in the window has me looking at one of the faces). Leading up to the temple is a big moat with a bridge and on either side of the bridge there are carving of stone that depict the Hindu view of creationism.... like 52 gods and 52 demons churning a sea of milk to create mankind. Kinda cool to see the Hindu influence in a place that is now predominately Buddhist. My favorite temple was Ta Phrom.... this is where they filmed Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie and it is awesome. It is supposedly still in the same condition that it was discovered in during the early 20th century. Angkor wat was huge and then taken back by the jungle and then not discovered until recent history... to this day most of the archeology of Angkor is unknown because there still hasn't been detailed research on the area. So this temple has crazy big trees growing out of the walls and moss covering everything... kinda creepy because it looks like an old abandoned temple that no one knows about (see picture of me and vida at the temple).
That night i decided to wash my clothes in the sink... bad idea in Cambodia. It is so hot and humid that you cant dry anything. I thought that my clothes were going to mold before they dried. And our room only had a fan (i say that but i have yet to stay in an AC room that i paid for... im cheap like that... but i would have given my left nut for some AC in Cambodia.. that's how hot is was). And then our room smelled all musky and moldy from all my wet clothes. AND... Cambodia is also really dusty... they really don't have any paved roads (beside the touristy roads) instead they have this red dirt stuff that gets everywhere (including your wet clothes) so everyone driving wears face masks.
Cambodia was totally worth it because Angkor wat is amazing..... even worth the $25 US dollars that they make you pay to leave the country... seriously who does that. But now I am on the cool beach and plan to do some sea kayaking tomorrow to the karst formations out in the oceans and explore some sea caves.