The temples of Angkor Wat are about 5 km from Siem Reap. Mr. Sarom took us around in his tuk tuk. The Angkor area is really a huge are with several dozen temples. I believe that each Khmer king built there own temple. I'm not really into history, so you can check out the link above for more history. I do know the Khmer empire controlled most of Southeast Asia from the 9th to the 14th century.
There are lots of beggar kids roaming about the temples. They all speak
English and they start the conversation by asking, "where you from?" It's
all down hill from here. They first want coins, then dollars, or they want
to sell you shit. There are also people trying to sell you stuff everywhere.
They will yell from 100 feet away. "You want cold water?" We also discover
they are multi-lingual. We were being following down a row of vendors by a
couple Japanese guys. The hawkers transition to Japanese was flawless.
One other note about Angkor, This is where the movie Tomb Raider was filmed. I'm sure it was an ideal location, other than it is in Cambodia. Dozens of temples, all of then a bit different. This is why Angelina Jolie adopted a Khmer kid. So best I can tell the 3 most famous Khmers of all time would be, not necessarily in any order.
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Maddux Jolie
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Dith Pran (from the killing fields)
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