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A reminder to be humble and prepared for the unexpected at all times: though we had reservations for a dinner theater shadow puppetry performance (to support a local street children support organization – shows the progressive leanings of Siem Reap’s tourist crowd), we had to wait a bit for the lcoal motorbike cop to bring by a recharger battery, after our car’s battery dropped out.
Daily Life In & Around Siem Reap
Like a break after a long day trekking up and down the steps and along the hot dusty paths of the temple complexes, I thought your eyes might delight in some scenes of everyday life in and around Angkor Wat. Some of these are from my morning run in Siem Reap town (about 5 km south of the entrance to the temple complex, itself about 2 km south of the moat around Angkor Wat), while others were shot from the car coming back down from our day trip to Kbal Spean and Banteay Srei.
People who were there only four years ago tell me Siem Reap was a sleepy and underdeveloped little town; Steve’s guidebook still had him worried about pirates on the river and/or bandits on the road if we took the bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. Summary: things are developing rapidly in Cambodia, especially Siem Reap, which probably funds something like half of the country’s economy. I enjoyed my run and the road trips, since I’m used to living closer to the real economy in countries like this – being a pure tourist and traveling past villages in a hired car, without a chance to interact more directly and get a sense of the people and economy was an odd feeling for me at this point.
Yup, one of these images doesn’t fit: the first of two Preah Khan temple images you’ll see scattered about, mainly because it didn’t fit too well anywhere else. Ah well.
Bayon
If Angkor Wat is the principal emblem of the sites here, the brooding faces of the Bayon are a close second. The French explorer who first re-“discovered” this temple described hacking his way through dense jungle and coming upon a pile of rock from which he saw a face peering down at him…and then another…and then he reeled back in near-horror as he realized how many faces there were looking down at him. As Lonely Planet puts it, talk about Big Brother: one theory is the face is modeled on the ruler of the time.
While it’s best known for the towering faces, Bayon has tons and tons of bas-relief sculptures that recount both stories from the classic myths, and tales of governance and daily life – quite like Angkor Wat in fact. These are very deeply carved and thus to me quite impressive and life-like, but the tour books agree Angkor Wat’s are of higher artistic quality. Still, I think you’ll agree these are quite impressive!
Do notice the costumed Cambodians posing with tourists here on the east entranceway to the Bayon. 
Ta Prohm
Ta Prohm is a large temple complex which most people refer to – somehow it comes easier to the Wetsern-trained mind – as the Indiana Jones temple. It’s essentially being left in a state of continuing decay, moderately arrested and maintained. Here you see something of what the other temples must have been after centuries of the jungle growing in, over, on and around them – when the first French archeologists re-“discovered” them in the late 1800s and early 1900s. You may recognize some of this from any number of adventure movies which have been filmed here in recent decades.
These impressive four-sided Buddha (?) images guard the east and west entrances to the Ta Prohm complex; having not yet seen the Bayon, Steve and I were quite impressed and Steve was almost a mite freaked out, perhaps. They’re quite dramatic, the first time you see these big stone faces! 
(so much world, so little time....) 