Sunrise at Angkor Wat

Justin and I got up early this morning to go to Angkor Wat to watch the sun rise over the temples. Cambodia time is two hours behind Japan, so getting up at 4:30 AM (6:30 AM Japan time) wasn't exactly a dream, but for one of the great sights in UNESCO World Heritage, it was totally worth it.

We decided to go with a guide here, and it was definitely the right decision. Our guide Chheiy (I feel bad that I'm probably spelling it wrong; it's pronounced "Chai") picked us up at the hotel with a van at 5 AM and we drove out to the temple complex. Angkor Wat has five towers: imagine a square, with a tower in the center, and another tower on each of the four corners. From the front, it looks like there are only three towers. This is the view shown on the Cambodian flag. (Cambodia, for trivia buffs, is the only county to feature a building on its national flag).

Angkor Wat

However, there is a spot from the moat around Angkor where you can force perspective such that you see all five of the towers. This is where we went with our guide. Cambodians are enterprising, and local merchants had set down mats right along the waterline and reserved them for people who bought drinks from them. I felt like getting cheap and staying where we were, but fortunately Justin decided that $5 was worth it. We ended up with a spectacular spot right on the water, where nobody could get in front of us and mess up our photographs of the reflections, which is great, when you take a look at what would have been between us and the water if we'd stayed where we were:

Pictured: Every tourist in Siem Reap

So here's a time-lapse of our morning experience. First, it was dark. (This is to be expected). The bright-ish dot right over the temple is a beautiful crescent moon. 

The sun started creeping up over the horizon between 5:30 and 6 AM.

This picture is dorky, but it is evidence that we were there.

It was a long wait for the full sunrise but sometimes I think that's good for you. Angkor Wat has been around for eight hundred years. It was probably appropriate for me to sit for an hour. Plus, we got to watch little frogs and bugs bumbling about. Who needs television?

If you look closely, you can see a dragonfly in the foreground.

And then it happened!

Wait for it.... (Hum Also Sprach Zarathustra if it helps)

bum.... Bummm.... BUMMMMMMMMM!!!!

On the main causeway, we were able to squeeze in a couple of pictures of the sunrise alignment. See, Angkor Wat was built so that the sun would come right up the side of that main temple on the spring equinox. And through a brilliant and complete lack of planning, Justin and I were here on the spring equinox. Look at that sun go!

I think it rests on the exact tip of the temple after it rises a bit more, but I only learned that when I came home now. Plus, photographing the sun was starting to burn out my eyeballs, so maybe it's just as well we didn't stay and end up like Galileo.

Sunrise over Angkor Wat temple... that's one more thing off the bucket list!