Indiana Bear - Temple Explorer - Part 1

Hullo bears and not-a-bears! We have had a busy few days. I am a beary hot little bear!

First - we spent a day exploring temples. And then a second day exploring temples. These are not like the temples in Bangkok though - these are more or less ruined temples. They were abandoned around the year 1400 AD and only "rediscovered" in the mid-1800s. They were all covered and eaten up by the jungle, but now most of them have been cleared and put back together again.

The first place we went was Angkor Wat. Apparently it is the largest religious site on earth and you can see it from space!

It was beary large and a long walk.

 It was built by a king who thought he was a god. It needed 300,000 people to build it! They floated the big stones down the river on rafts (when they could) or dragged them through the jungle by elephant. It took 37 years to build. And once it was done, the king only used it as a holiday place twice a year!!!

 It was beary cool with lots of nooks and crannies and beautiful carvings on the walls.

 You could almost get lost in there.. except there are too many tourists for that to happen!

Some people climbed up to the main temple. They had to be dressed correctly - no tank-tops or short-shorts - luckily I made the cut!

It was pretty cool. You'd never know it but there were hordes of tourists all around. Some of them even wanted to take pictures of me!

 Whew... so that was Angkor Wat. Then...

It was off to Ta Prohm - it is near Angkor Wat and is a temple where they have left some of the jungle trees in place. It was my favourite!

 It was much cooler because of the trees and things just looked a little more Indiana Jones-ish.

 The tree roots have done a number on the place though. They get in between the stones and then whole walls fall over.

I think this hole in the tree is a secret entrance to the temple!

See some of the carvings?? They were pretty neat. Apparently most of the temples were painted red back in the olden days using henna. You can still see a bit of the red next to me.

 There's a big old tree sitting on a wall.

Isn't this cool?? You could play hide-and-seek in here for hours and never run out of hiding spots!!

This was a super cool tree...

Whew... it was beary hot out - +36 Celsius but it felt like +47. That is almost enough to make a little bear sweat!

See!!! Super hot - I did sweat!