When you visit the famous Angkor Wat in Cambodia you have the option to purchase a 1, 3, or 7-day pass. We bought the 7-day pass. This incredible 1,000-year-old park is much much bigger than we imagined. We'll show you our favorite spots and how we spent our 7 days in Angkor Wat, where to go if you only have a limited amount of time, how you can avoid some of the crowds, and some tips for having a great visit.

We've just arrived at the main Angkor Wat entrance and it is bustling here. There's tuk tuks everywhere waiting to take you places. We can see the main Angkor Wat temple in the distance. It's pretty exciting. The Angkor Archaeological Park protects the remains of the Khmer Empire that primarily existed from the 9th to the 15th century. The park includes the famous Angkor Wat, Bayon Temple, and Ta Prohm Temple. Many people say they're going to visit Angkor Wat but what they really mean is they're going to visit the remains of the ancient city of Angkor, which has many archaeological sites of which the main one is Angkor Wat. The sun is intense here. The UV index is very high so make sure you have your sun protection. If you're here on a 1-day pass you'll see the highlights. But if you're on a 3 or 7-day pass you'll also have the opportunity to explore some of the other less crowded and incredibly impressive sites and maybe even return to a few of your favorites like we were able to do. I can't believe you're going to film this mess.

When you look at Angkor Wat you see 5 towers. The main tower in the middle and 4 on each crner. And the first square the one that everyone gets to first is so busy and everyone gets so excited. Chris and I got so excited. We're taking lots of pictures. Everyone's posing. But by the time you get to the fourth square the crowd has kind of thinned out and it's a great spot to be and get photos without a lot of other people in your way.

Most people just follow the main path through Angkor Wat but there are so many other areas of the temple to check out if you have a bit more time. When you come here you're probably going to enter off Rainbow Bridge and you absolutely should start there. But the east entrance doesn't seem to be very busy and it is absolutely stunning here. We get some great views of Angkor Wat. So don't forget to come check out the east entrance as well. We grabbed a tuk tuk using Pass App from the east entrance of the Angkor Wat temple.

And now we're heading to Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm is one of the temples we're most excited about seeing because it has a jungle growing out of it. It was also a filming location for the 2001 movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider that Chris got pretty into.

With our 7-day pass we actually ended up visiting Ta Prohm a few times. It's quite a busy and popular temple, but for a much quieter experience you can come first thing in the morning when it opens. And of course there's also more opportunities to simulate a video game.

For one of our pass days we decided to walk from Angkor Wat to Bayon Temple. Tuk tuks are big business around here and there's a lot of encouragement for you to hire one and use it for the day to take you to all the different temples. But the Angkor Park is also so beautiful and it's really lovely to be able to walk between some of the closer temples. And we're so glad we walked because we would have missed so much Like the walk up to the incredible Phnom Bakheng Temple and its amazing architecture.

You know everyone sticks to all these really popular temples that are well known that are well placed on the map. This is just stunning. Like we have 360° views around us. We are on ancient archaeological site that's over a thousand years old and we're the only ones here. Back down the hill and closer to the road is the much smaller Baksei Chamkrong Temple. This one is very close to another popular tourist attraction but it doesn't seem to get a lot of visitors.

It's quite steep and I'm a little scared. Oh this one definitely has my adrenaline pumping! My heart is pounding! The steps are so steep coming up and then even being up here the ledges are pretty narrow. It's pretty cool, but uh yeah I'm nervous. Coming down from that temple we're almost immediately at the much visited South Gate Bridge. The causeway to the bridge is flanked by gods and demons who look like they are playing tug-of-war as they churn the mythological sea of milk. Walking past that we found ourselves right underneath the dramatic South Gate that marks the entry to the next moated area of the park. From here we have a 1.5 km walk past small archaeological remnants to our next destination.

And when it comes into view we're in awe! Bayon Temple was originally built as a Buddhist temple in the late 12th century and has a different style from Angkor Wat which was originally Hindu. I am just loving all the textures on this temple and the way the rocks are coming in and out and the faces are built right into everything.

It's such a maze in here with options to turn left or right or go straight almost every few steps. Just north of the Bayon Temple is the popular BaphuonTemple from the 11th century which has some stairs you can climb to get views of the surrounding area. In this area is also the Terrace of Elephants which of course is carved with elephants and it was once used for viewing events. There are some cool temples just across the street from this area. We thought they were fantastic but since they aren't on the bus and tuk tuk tour routes no one else seems to be there. We see lots of people visiting these Wats wearing flipflops and really light non-protective shoes. And certainly that's an option. But if you want to be climbing up to these higher wats and really exploring and feeling sturdy on your feet I recommend a much stronger mountain type shoe. So these are the trails that we found for walking on. They're marked on the map as roads. Some of them aren't even on the map but we use the satellite pictures to figure out where they were. And uh hopefully just over that way is the temple. Over the next few days we find ourselves walking or using Pass App to call tuk tuk so we can visit as many temples as we can in the park. We also used one of our pass days to visit some that were a little farther out of the park. When they were building these places they didn't just put down some flooring and call it a day. These are giant stone blocks and they are everywhere under all of these temples, all of the walkways. It's just so much work that they've put into making these places. And I know I keep saying it but it's phenomenal. We've been noticing holes in a lot of the rocks and we were wondering what they were If anyone knows let us know in the comments. Emilie don't move. Be careful where you step. Blow Darts!

It's day 6 of our 7-day Angkor pass. And once again we're at a temple where no one's around. We found one, it's a little bit farther out and there's absolutely nobody here. We're the only ones walking around and exploring this temple right now. I love it. This temple that we're exploring right now is the Eastern Mebon Temple. And it used to be the center of one of the biggest reservoirs ever built by hand in the world. And it was an island right in the middle of the reservoir. And when you look out at the four sides you can see boat ramps. And the walls at the sides are really, really high because that's where the water was. In our attempt to find the less visited temples in the Angkor Wat Archaeological Park we also found ourselves in some sketchy areas. I had just finished saying "I hope somebody's built a bridge over this." And we came around the corner and we found this. And now Em's gonna try it.

I just walked over that very sketchy bridge following Chris's instructions to see this. I'm making some pretty questionable decisions today! To be fair I was surprised that she walked over that bridge and I said that we should go back. She is making questionable decisions today! There was more to this temple though. You can see half buried carved rocks all around us. Okay let's head back to Angkor Wat to see what it looks like today. When you're hiking through archaeological parks always bring snacks.

We can't figure out where everyone is. We're at Angkor Wat, it's 12:30 on a Friday, it's a beautiful day and there's not that many people here. We were here just a week ago and it was pretty packed. Maybe it's cuz we were here on the weekend, I don't know if that makes a difference or not but uh much less people today around the same time. When we were here last week we had to wait in line to go up the stairs to the main tower. And at some points they were holding the line and not letting anybody else up. But just now we had the whole staircase to ourselves. So here's Yama. Actually I'll move this way a little bit. So here's Yama riding a buffalo with all his arms wielding batons. 18 arms. This is depiction of heaven and hell and different tiers of hell. There are different tiers based on the things that you did badly like cutting down the wrong tree versus I don't know urinating on a Dava's temple or something like that. For our final seventh day on our pass we watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. We have about 30 odd minutes till sunrise and the sky is already starting to glow pink. There are several spots to watch the sunrise. Some people pick a single spot or just go where their tour group takes them. We moved around a bit to figure out which angle we like best. The right hand side in front of the pond was our favorite. And those are our seven days inside the Angkor Wat Archaeological Park and some tips we learned from our visit. We're so glad we were able to spend so much time here and get into exploring not just the popular temples but the less visited and less crowded ones too.