Cambodia Day 3: Angkor Wat - from sunrise to sunset 

My mobilephone alarm rang at 4:30am... and I suppose I sleep-walked to the bathroom without hitting the wall or bathroom door thankfully. Then we went downstairs to meet the rest and got our poor driver up at 5:00am. Without time for breakfast, we headed to Angkor Wat to witness the legendary sunrise which we read so much about.  The roads were dark and when we made our footsteps into the historical Angkor Wat, it was still dark and we had to use torchlights to find our way. My biggest fear at that time was walking into the moat. We found a place before a lotus pond, which seemed to be the most popular spot for photo-taking and set up our equipment to catch the first light of the day appearing behind Angkor Wat. 

It was beautiful beyond description, the tranquil, peaceful and majestic feeling... even the air smelt different... something that can't be explained enough, something that one just has to witness it live! I could hardly believe I am in Angkor Wat, one of the most talked-about lost and found empire of Kampuchea or Kemboja, as known in my history books during my school days.

We spent 4 hours photographing all the angles of this historical site, the bas reliefs, figures of the famous Apsara and monks. Especially monks, I remembered some of us getting all excited whenever monks appear because they tend to "beautify" photographs with their striking orange garment against the earthy historical backdrop.

We finally sat down to have coconuts, our first source of food for the day. At a little after 11:00 am, we left to get some proper food at a local market place. Fried rice was like food made in heaven because we were so hungry and exhausted. After shopping around a little, we returned to our guest house for a three-hour rest (after Cat's "bargain" with KK).

At 4:00pm, we returned to Angkor Wat to catch more photographs of the place at evening light though ideally, dawn and dusk would have been perfect but we didn't have enough time for that. We spent more than an hour there which meant we just couldn't get enough pictures of that majestic place. 

We were so late for the sunset shoot at Pre Rup. When we reached Pre Rup, we only caught the last of lights there. We went back to the same local place in Siem Reap for dinner (we had dinner at the same place for three consecutive days, I think we were just too tired to find another place to eat). After dinner, we went shopping for souvenirs at a place called Center Market and then returned to our guest house and had the usual chit-chat session. 3 days down, only 4 more to go...