Dude in Battambang, Siem Reap & Back to Phnom Penh

5th - 9th October 2007, Siem Reap
So I take the 8am bus for $5 from Battambang to Siem Reap which takes 6 hours. For half the journey, we are on tarmac, for the second half it is a dirt track sinilar to the one leading to my village town in Turkey where I was born 27 years ago :)

Main reason for coming here is to see the Temples of Angkor, Built over a period of 500years from around 800AD by the kings of the Khmer empire, these are glorified temples which represent the power, riches and opulance of the self proclamied GOD-KINGS

I become obsessed with Bayon, one of the temples of Angkor Thom. This is a temple with 54 towers. Each tower has 4 huge faes carved into the rock facing the 4 cardinal directions, north/south/east/west. All the faces have a slight smile on their face some with open eyes some with closed. Nobody knows the exact reason for the faces...


Anyhow, these temples have the most expensive entry fee I have paid so far - $40 for a three day pas. One day is $20, but two or a 3 day pass is $40 and you need at least 2 days. To help the local moto drivers, there are no public busses to the temples, which are about 5km out of town and foreigners are banned from renting mopeds!! So you have to rent a motornbike and driver for the day, which is $7 ;)

9th September: My western loop of Cambodia comes to an end as I take the $5 bus from Siem Reap back to Phnom Penh, the capital and stay a few days more in Phnom Penh, do another 2 day trip to Sihanoukville & get back to Phnom Penh again!!

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