Bayon

After a stunning sunrise, and some pancakes at the “Lady Gaga” food tent near the lake, we headed off to the nearby temple of Bayon.

Bayon and Ta Prohm were my two favorite temples of the whole trip. Bayon, or ‘that one temple with all the faces’, really felt and looked unreal. The fact that it’s a Buddhist temple amongst a lot of Hindu temples does make it stand out, but it really was more than that.

Even though there were a ton of tourists and travelers milling about, Bayon was the sort of place where you could easily tuck into a dark corridor or an area covered with ruins, and feel completely alone. It made me want to go searching for ancient artifacts and hidden talismans, or go hang out with Indiana Jones.

I’m sure there’s not an inch of that place left undiscovered, but Bayon just had something about it to make me feel more like an explorer than a traveler, which I loved! Plus like so many of the other temples the details are astonishing.