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Published: August 5th 2006
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Our second day started with us moving 'home' to a 'The Continental Cafe' just around the corner, the people here were really nice and gave you, what looked like a genuine smile.
Borey then picked us up at 8:30 for more temple spotting. Yesterday really tired us out but we were now refreshed and we had saved Angkor Wat for today, plus Melissa had talked me into going up in the baloon for a panoramic view of Angkor.
How was it I here you ask?? Quite scary, very quick and again expensive at 15$, but we did get some good views around the flat countrside with Angkor Wat in the Background.
Next stop was the much hyped Angkor Wat!! Could it live up to expectations? We don't know! It was great to walk around, but its massive!! and like I said earlier we spent over 3 hours there. It was very maze like with lots of corridors and rooms. Every corner you turned you were met by a different carving, doorway or tourist. As with all the temples we had seen so far, the carvings in the stones were very impressive and so were the buildings. To think
Andy fighting off the sellers
"You buy from meeeeeeeee"
"Not chuffing likely luv!!" that someone had sat there and carved these, by hand, out of blocks of stone is quite hard to believe.
Before we left we haggled down ourselves a frdge magnet, yes you read that right. A fridge magnet and a couple of drinks. (We had read on someones blog that it was worth even haggling for food and drinks, so we did) The people were so desperate to sell you something, one guy was running around like a headless chicken.
As we had lunch, at one of the other main temples called Bayon where we haggled our food down from 2.50$ to 1$, we found out that every time we ate at a restaurant, Borey our driver got his food for free. Which explains his asking yesterday, how many times a day we ate and if we had already had breakfast!! He also asked us if we would like to go to some souvineer shops on our way home. We didn't have to buy anything, we just had to go in and look interested, this way he would get his commission for taking us there. We agreed.
We carried on with our sightseeing, up and down temple steps,
some crazily steep, it was nice inside the temples because it was a lot cooler than outside. We saw a contrast in temples, one called Ta Prohm (where they filmed Tombraider) that was really overgrown and crumbled, one called Ta Keo which was big but never quite got finished off so all the stonework was uncarved and one called Chau Say Thevoda that was being restored, the latter two was good to see as it gave us a little insight into the work that goes into the carvings. The one that was being restored was being done so in a lighter coloured cement instead of stone. We were unsure if it was a good thing or not? Maybe they should just use what stone has fallen down and is laying around and leave it at that?
Our day came to an end, again we were 'templed out', but we'd had another good day. We went to the souvineer shops. One was really posh and it was clear that the stuff there was way out of our price range (A Kashmeer scarf costing 10,000$) Plus we were smelly and dirty. As we got dropped off Borey counted his commission. He
got 8$ (4.50 quid) for taking us to the shops, he even got 2$ which we didn't know about for taking us to the baloon, even though it was us who wanted to go there. Even though he had got our 10$ we felt so happy for him as he was so happy at getting himself an extra 4 pounds 50 for the day. Thats nothing to us but to see the joy on his face was great!! So for a days work this guy had earnt himself about a tenner. So the next time you think you are skint, think that this guy gets a tenner a day, on a good day!!!
That evening as we were walking around town we got a little miffed. As you walk around Siem Reap you are constantly being asked for tuk-tuks, money etc. and as usual we always try and be polite, either by saying "no thankyou, or Tay o'coon" but as we passed a driver and we said "no thankyou" he kinda took the piss (sorry) so we got a little angry and wondered what you are supposed say? We still wonder.
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Auntie Marg
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Well I haven't been in touch lately I know the blogs and pictures are still amazing ! can't wait to see you both (soon) look after yourselves and keep the blogs coming ! Love to you both XX