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Published: October 30th 2007
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We splashed out a bit on our bus tickets and got an express bus to Siem Reap which took about 6 hrs and managed to find a nice hotel, no not hostel, hotel! (still only 7 pounds). We arranged for a tuk tuk to take us around the temples for the next 3 days and headed into town for some food. Our first stop was the aptly named Bar street which was just full of bars and restaurants, not what we expected but all very nice/posh so was pretty cool. Ate a nice meal and headed back early to recharge our batteries for our day at the temples.
Up early and a big breakfast to set us up for the day. Our tuk tuk guy was early and very keen as he had a full fare for the day rather than hanging on the street saying "you want tuk tuk" to every westerner who passes by. We arrived at the gate and payed our money for a 3 day pass which involved us having a rather fetching photo for our ID. We headed to our first and biggest temple, Angkor Wat. This is the temple used on their flag and
their beer. As we arrived at the temple the first thing we noticed was it was packed. We had seen the temple on TV and in magasines and it looked amazing but nothing could prepare us for seeing it for real. The place was gigantic and we spent the next 2 hrs walking around, lisa going bonkers with the camera. It was a shame that there was a little bit of scaffolding on the main building but still an amazing sight. Oh and we also found a family of wild monkeys eating bananas at the back of the temple....cooooooool.
Our next temple was bayon, part of Angkor Thom, which was just as impressive as Angkor Wat but made better by the fact there was hardly anyone there. We guessed this was because people had just bought a ticket for the main temple so we were pretty chuffed. Bayon was in a different style and had lots of collumns made with 4 heads, 1 on each side. Again Lisa went nuts with the camera. We visited another 2 temples that day, the favourite being the one where they filmed tomb raider (I had forgotten my hotpants and gun so any
Tomb Raider style action was out of the question). Anyway, they have done no restoration work to this temple and amazingly the large trees have grown over the ruins, you need to see it to believe it but check out our pics...amazing. We were knackered so got back in our tuk tuk and headed back to our hotel. We were feeling brave and arranged for the tuk tuk to pick us up at 4.30am so we could see the sun rise over Ankor Wat, food and an early night.
We woke at 4am to an amazing rain storm, great! We decided to call off the sun rise (as if there would be one anyway) and arranged for our tuk tuk guy to pick us up later. Once we made it to the temples again we went out to some further away from the centre which hardly anyone visits which was cool. They weren't as impressive as the main ones but was still good to see as it gave a better perspective of how vast an area is covered by the temples. We only managed 3/4 of a day as we were knackered and i was excited about the england
football and the rugby world cup semi final with France. After some food we started on the vodka redbull to keep us awake until the 2am kick off. We met with Bill & Melly who we had met the night before and settled in to watch England win first the football, then beat the French at rugby in their own country.....just magic. This was until i calculated where we would be for the final which is southern Loas where they only have electricity between 6pm-11pm.....Doh!
After a semi-good nights sleep we decided to give the temples a miss and hit the markets and sort out bus tickets, even a bit of blogging was done but i started to feel a bit worse for wear after the late night so not too much. I also managed to get my 2nd hair cut of our trip which again was a bit tricky when the free cambodian head massage after the cut involves beating the back of your head......hello hangover! We generally wasted the day and settled into our hotel restaurant for some food whilst watching "The Killing Fields" on DVD which wasn't as good as i thought it was going to
be but worth watching. Up early the next day to catch the bus back to Pnom Phen (our third visit) as we need to get to the Loas embassy to get our Visa before heading north and crossing the "semi-official" border to Loas! Gulp!
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