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Published: March 17th 2009
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Our great great holiday season (after half year hard studying in Singapore) started from Bangkok, where we were 26th of February. We spent couple of nights there just chilling out and calming down, preparing for our "Grand Tour". Bangkok was, once again wonderful. I don't even know exactly why but somehow that 'City of Angels" appeals to me. The following blog entries I will post without pictures. I am so sorry for that but it would take me for ages for me to get the pictures downloaded, trust me I have tried. So I will add the photos later on. (Just a little reminder for those who want to be in contact with me; my Singaporean phone number is not working anymore so please use my "old" one if somethings turns out😊
Moving to Cambodia. I agree with the Lonely Planet's book that Cambodia could be the best described with the words "Good and Bad and Ugly". Aranyaprathet - Poipet border contained, like we expected, long ours waiting sweating at the same time like little pigs, but I didn't mind since everyhting went anyway pretty smoothly. We took that so called "bad reputation tour bus with cheap prize" from Khao
San Road and had absolutely no problems among the way. Maybe we were just luckly. The road condition between Popet border and Siem Reap was not that bad either. I had read horrible stories about that way but in real it was like some summer cottage road back in home. So welcome to Finland folks if you want to see bad roads 😉 No just kidding
Our first Destination in Cambodia was Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. I bet most of the people are heading to that city to see the ruins of a temple complex and area built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city
I had been repeating to Anniina for ages that "I wanna see Angkor I wanna see Angkor" and that's what we did. One big highlight during our travels, definitely.
Just couple words about Siem Reap before the Angkor since the city was a completely surprise for us when we arrived there at 8 pm. The gap between the rich and poor was more visible there than in other places I have been this far. Casinos and luxurious hotels here and there, poor
people dust and disastrous housing on the other side. Some special charm there definitely was, maybe because of the friendly and helpful people we met immediately after arriving there.
Angkor Wat was definitely the worth of seeing. I was afraid it could be a little disappointment after waiting for it so long time, but no I could recommend it to all really. There were three kind of passes going there, 1/3/6 days passes and since the whole area was so HUGE to discover we bought three days passes (and ended up using only two days of it because our tight schedule).
Walking and climbing there made me feeling like a Clara Croft or Indiana Jones. Some temples steps were so narrow and high that we need to do a lot of effort to get us up there, which was a lot of fun actually. During the first day we did a small tour and our fantastic and experienced tuk tuk - driver Van waited us outside the temples when we discovered the area. When the evening came we climbed with our last strengths to the Angkor's highest mountain to see widely spoken sunset. We were not the only ones
there.. more like the whole mountain was FULL of people waiting for the sunset, which we eventually couldn't be able to see' Whole the sky was bright blue but when it came close to sunset the huge cloud came from nowhere prevented us too see the sky.. All in all the day was stunning.
The second day was the day for the Grand Tour and we traveled all the one hour's way to see the furthest temples surrounded by water. Our legs were in such a pain after two days climbing and walking around Angkor, but when being there we didn't even notice it.
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