Colin & Stu: We were told there'd be pad thai: Angkor Wat: A Remarkably Unfunny Title

Stuart and I parted ways in Bangkok on Friday. While he was going back to the good old US of A, while I decided to postpone reality by just a couple of days and check out the great temples of Angkor Wat. While I was excited to start off on the next, and final, leg of my journey, it was sad to say goodbye to Stu. Aside from the fact that we'd had a terrific time together, his boyish charm and steely good looks had proved invaluable in dealing with the locals, and negotiating my way through Cambodia without him struck me as a daunting task. But I pushed on and came out relatively unscathed.

For detailed information on the history of Angkor Wat click here, otherwise, continue reading for my brief and likely inaccurate description that I picked up while I was there: located in Cambodia (national motto: "Hello sir, you want massage?"), Angkor Wat is an enormous and inspiring cluster of temples and cities built by the Ancient Khmer between the 10th century and 16th century. The flagship of them all is the actual Angkor Wat, which is the pride and joy of Cambodia...it's featured on the flag and is the subject of the (pretty tasty) national beer.

There are many other temples than Angkor Wat in the complex though, which spans about 10 square miles or so. Basically every leader (or living god, as he was proclaimed) kept trying to one up the guy before him in terms of grandiosity and scale. This system was probably a real pain in the ass for the builders at the time, but it makes for some excellent temple-looking. While Cambodia is a largely Buddhist country, the temples were actually built to honor the Hindu gods, as the ancient Khmer were sold on the faith after sampling a particularly tasty chicken tikka masala dish (note: I just made that up, but wouldn't be surprised if it was true).

Okay, history lesson is over.

I had a motorcycle dude drive me around (I was on the back of the bike, which took a little getting used to), and I climbed and explored the temples for about 9 hours and had a blast.

WARNING: Significant Temple footage follows

High Angkor Wattage

Monkey walking across the bridge to Angkor Wat...that's not a lake but a moat, and a pretty serious one if I say so myself.

Drive by one of the temples

Riding through the gate to the ancient city/temples of Angkor Thom

Ta Prohm Wat...I liked this one, the jungle has really overrun the place. Part of Tomb Raider was filmed here...anyone else noticed the trend of us visiting the filming locations for crappy movies?

My main man Jim (probably not his real name) who drove me around. He thought I was the coolest guy around because I'm from California. Had a penchant for talking to me while driving when I would have preferred he kept his eyes on the road.

I didn't run into as many other fans of the Terps 2003 National Champion basketball team as I expected at Angkor Wat

Face of Jayavarman VII at the Bayon temple...there are about 200 or so of these faces carved into the walls of this temple, note the slight smile which was supposedly added to convey a sense of humanity for this powerful king.