Everyone tells you to see Angkor Wat at sunrise, and everyone is right, though not quite for the reason they say. The photograph is lovely, yes. But what stayed with me was the hush — hundreds of people, and almost no sound, all of us watching the towers resolve out of the dark.
We spent the rest of the day among quieter ruins, where the forest has reclaimed the stone and you can run your hand along a thousand years of carving with no one else in sight. Our guide read the walls to us like a book, and the day became a history lesson none of us will forget.