Angkor Wat, I had no idea about the type of heat I was about to experience... Amazing ruins, with each successive ruler trying to outdo the previous in terms of architectural mastery. By the time Angkor Wat was in the works, an incredible amount of manpower and resources had to be dedicated to the construction - a display of power that is thought to have contributed to the fall of the Khmer empire.

Wikipedia's take:
"In 2007 an international team of researchers using satellite photographs and other modern techniques concluded that Angkor had been the largest preindustrial city in the world with an urban sprawl of 1,150 square miles."


This girl was barely 10 years old, carrying her sister... they're off to work. Her mother had official employment at the site, but there were often children hiding in the shadows waiting to harvest donations to be made as offerings to Buddha statutes. Some travelers & I decided after a brief moral discussion that the kids needed the money more than Buddha, and walked on to explore the other sites... with an uneasy feeling - uncertain and at odds with our own thoughts and reactions.