I ended up finding a no-frills guest house called "Popular" for $5, with a nice roof-top restaurant that served a decent peanut butter and jelly "sandwich" for $1.80. I had heard that the Cambodian food that they served wasn't so great, so I just stuck to breakfast when I ate there, and went elsewhere for cheaper, better local food.

The big thing in Siem Reap is to wake up before dawn to see sunrise at the temples, but evidently it's a zoo of tourists all clamboring to the top of a hill to get the perfect sunrise photo, so I decided against this activity. Instead, I woke up at a more reasonable hour on my first day in Siem Reap, and my new american friend, Mike, and I rode bicycles to Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. Upon arriving in front of the temples, we were greeted with a chorus of Cambodian women and children selling water, food, and souvenirs. The children, particularly, speak excellent english and know dozens of facts about every country, including our president, capital cities, possible future presidents, etc. They are very aggressive sellers and would follow us down every temple path. However, we discovered at the end of the first day that there is a line on the ground, a literal piece of rope, that the children cannot cross. It is a force field that protects the temples. Otherwise, there would certainly be vendors in every room in every temple all throughout Siem Reap. This force field was a fantastic discovery, and there was a certain amount of power in knowing that we could cross this line and be alone with the temples.

Arriving at Angkor Wat, the mother of all temples, I immediately realized that lighting plays an integral role in the look of these structures; it does not affect the in-person experience too much, but it can make all the difference in a photograph. I had to resign myself to the fact that there would be only so much that I could capture and take with me, and that most of Siem Reap would only exist in my memories of the place.

On the first day, we rode the entire "small circuit," hitting all the big guns, so to speak, including Angkor Wat, Bayon, Ta Phrom, etc. It was an awe-inspiring, exhausting day, in which we left the guesthouse at 7:30 a.m. and returned at dusk. Each temple was a unique place to get lost in, with hundreds of corridors and stairways and tiny rooms. Sometimes, I would round a corner and be entirely alone for ten minutes, with just the sound of dripping water to break the silence. Other temples were virtually overrun with tour groups, lining up in front of a particular part of the ruins to take photos. It was in the most quiet, most remote temples, though, that I could sit and begin to recontruct the empire that must have once existed.