Day 8: Last full day in Cambodia

Today was filled with leisure! The last two days were packed with fast paced temple visits, so I opted to get up late have a nice pizza lunch at The Pizza Co in the only slick mall siem reap has. It's next to a Swenson's ice cream shop, and Revlon counter!

The pizza was quite good and with a large drink came out to a whoping $4.70. That's expensive in Cambodia to be sure! You'd never see food at a local stall retailing for 20,000 riel! I rented a bicycle again and decided to take it easy visiting my favorite temples of Bayon and Angkor Wat in the afternoon. My plans for a peaceful ride around the temple moat were initially thwarted when my bike chain derailed a couple kilometers before my destination. That really sucked. My hands were completely covered in grease and I failed to fix the chain until I reached Angkor Wat where a tiny boy came up to help me. We finally got the chain back on the gears and I was back in business. I must've washed my hands at the one formal restaurant in the area 20 times over.

At Bayon the afternoon light was shining at a novel angle on the sublime buddha/king faces which were great to just sit and stare at for a long while. I also climbed up the steep steps of another shiva temple pyramid named Baksei Chamkrong which apparantly translates into something like "shelter under birds wings".

My final temple visit in Angkor was back at the big temple really examining the details of various bas reliefs. There are 100s of meters of hindu storytelling on the outer walls. The battle of Kurukshetra from the Mahabharta, the story of Ramayana, and a particular creation myth called "churning the sea of milk". Before actual sunset, I biked back to town with the intention of partying on Bar St.

However, I was so exhausted I just had a quick vegetarian thali dinner at a local indian restaurant (not really superb, but cheap at $3) and even though I set an 11PM alarm to head out I just woke up briefly tossed and turned and went back to sleep. I had an early morning ahead of me, I had to be at the airport by 6AM to head back.