Caught a bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and pace is so much less frenetic here! Hired a mountain bike with one working gear and one brake and rode out to Angkor. First day was spent at Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. Size of the temples was amazing! After you enter the South Gate of Angkor Thom its still a few kilometers to its centre! Roads cut through dense jungle and then the temples appear! I like this place! just a bit too hot! Second day cycled to more remote, smaller temples. Didnt realise just how distance was involved, at [View Full Entry]

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Day X and XI Border We managed to cross the border after 23 hours. WUHUU! Siem Reap We had 152km to drive to Siem Reap, roads were nice but landscapes were boring. We arrived by sunset and found a really nice hotel for only 15usd per night. Religion I talked with one woman from the US, who’s been living in Cambodia for some time, and she said that local people are unhappy because of their religious belief that if you do once something wrong in your life you will be reborn as a dog. One mistake will haunt you forever. I [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone Well I've been a little slack with my updates lately.....but better late than never! When I last wrote I had arrived in Siem Reap and I was very excited about the days ahead of me exploring the temples in the area. I was staying in the Ta Som guest house which was pretty basic but at us$12 per night you couldn't expect too much....and that price included breakfast! So after I'd eaten my eggs, french bread and fruit (Yum!) washed down with a coffee laden with condensed milk (not so yum!) my friendly tuk tuk driver turned up to [View Full Entry]

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I'm not a buddhist,and actually I'm not very interested in those temples neither.However,I was shocked by the majesty of the Angkor Wat. Those carving are fabulous! The monk looks friendly [View Full Entry]

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And so we arrived in Siem Reap, a place which must be up there with the most visited areas in South East Asia - a serious tourist town and presumably of massive importance to Cambodia's tourist industry (who would travel through SE Asia without at least popping in to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat?). We did like the town though - despite constant interest from tuk tuk drivers, restaurants, bars, hawkers, and a sea of tourists, it still manages to be laid back and very friendly....bit of dodginess on a Friday night as we watched, safe from our restaurant, ladies being [View Full Entry]

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So, let me tell you a little bit about Cambodia...The country is fascinating with breathtaking Angkor Complex. Coliseum looks like a child's play next to this amazing creation. It is horrifying to think of events only thirty years past, when you visit Killing Fields of Pol Pot. The country of warm weather and even warmer people. Cambodia is, however, absolutely incomprehensible when you see all the trash. I know, a lot of things have been said about Siem Reap and all the temples that surround it. They are beautiful. It is well worth the visit to see those magnificent religious creations. [View Full Entry]

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After 11 hours on a bus through rice fields, villages and towns (change of bus at Phnom Penh), we jumped on a tuk tuk straight to a hotel in serious need of showers, food and a stretch. Battambang, and the hotel (Royal Hotel no less!), had a great feel to it - very relaxed, sleepy town obviously making the most of tourism with lots of visitors wandering around. We went for a wee walk that night, at about 9pm, but everything was shut...excepting a textile shop for some reason! We reckoned we were going to enjoy this, and the area did [View Full Entry]

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Day 5 - Angkor Wat Was nicely surprised today with the breakfast we get here at the hotel, a big baguette, scrambled or fried egg, jam and butter, very filling and would keep you going for a good few hours.. Our guide turned up on time, in fact he was early, today we organised to be taken around in a tuk tuk with him, his name is Darith Touch and I will say now, he was great, very obliging with our needs, stopped if you saw something you wanted to take a photo of and had a very good sense of [View Full Entry]

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Our trip from bangkok to Siem reap went very smoothly compared to some of the horror stories we had read at talesofasia.com. This was probably due in part to the fact that we arranged all of our own travel instead of going with a packaged trip from Khaosan rd, which are supposedly riddled with scams. Our trip started at 5:15 am and ended at 2 pm, whereas the packaged trips leave at 7 am and end at 7pm. First we took a taxi from Khaosan rd. to the north bus station. It took three different drivers before we found one that [View Full Entry]

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Well having spent an eventful and unpleasant time in Vietnam I was really looking forward to a change of venue. I was still fighting a fever but it seemed to be somewhat under control after 5 days so I decided to fly to Siem Reap, the little town that services Angkor Wat. It was an afternoon flight and as flight time approached I certainly wasn't feeling any better. When we finally departed I was a human inferno and as it turned out had a temperative over 104 degrees again. I was just a little happy to land and was looking foerward [View Full Entry]

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