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Published: November 13th 2006
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Sorry about lack of photos of Angkor Wat and Bayon but we had a problem with the shop that transfered them from memory card to cd and they are lost (could have been worse), we have a friend catching up soon and im sure his will be good so we will steal his and show you later
After a 5 hour bus journey we arrived in Siem Reap, yet another bus journey of Karaoke & a dodgy Cambodian action movie, even though we couldn't understand a word we watched it anyway & made our own interpretation of what was going on.
Arrived in Siem Reap at around 3.30pm, found ourselves a tuk tuk driver which was to be our personal driver for our Angkor Wat experience. He looked a little like Tiger Woods when he smiled so that was our nickname for him. He didn't mind, he had no idea who Tiger Woods was anyway before Skip told him, even then he probably still had no idea. We left the bus station & Tiger took us to the Popular Guesthouse where we got ourselves a room, dumped the bags & it was off to Angkor Wat for the sunset..... What can
I tell you about Angkor Wat? Well it was built in the early 12th century for King Suryavarman II as his state temple and capital city. It is the largest and best-preserved temple at the site & is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre, first Hindu & then Buddhist. In the surrounding area of Angkor there are 100 or so temples which are the sacred remains of what was once a much larger administrative and religious centre, and were built between the 9th and 13th centuries to glorify a succession of Khmer kings. Angkor Wat being the largest religious structure in the world. We got there at around 4.45pm where you can buy your day pass for the next day & get to see the sunset for free. We had to walk up a hill to another temple so we could see the sunset, it was all a bit cloudy unfortunately so back down the hill to meet Tiger.
The following day we got picked up at 5am, Tiger was a little late so it was more like 5.20am. Still made the sunrise so no problem. We were surprised at how busy it was, bus loads
of Japanese tourists & the rest all gathered to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. It was still cool to see. It was then time to have a walk around & see what it was all about. It was pretty impressive as old ruins go. From there we went to see the other 2 main temples which are Bayon (the faces) which again was cool & Tu Prohm (the trees where Tomb Raider was filmed)which was my favorite. Our day was spent with Tiger driving us around to various other temples so we could have a look. We were all templed out by 3pm so got Tiger to take us back to our guesthouse & our afternoon was spent wandering around the market & relaxing.
Went out to Dead Fish Tower that evening for dinner which is a really cool resturant.
We decided to leave Siem Reap the next day & head to Sihanoukville for a bit of relaxation by the beach. After an 11hr day of traveling which was surprisingly ok, we finally arrived at Sihanoukville. It was dark when we arrived & we weren't really all that sure what was around so asked 2 moto drivers to take
us somewhere by the beach. They came up trumps & took us to GST Guesthouse which was 200m from Serendipity / Ochheuteal Beach. Needless to say the first day was spent soaking up the sun (we both got burn't) & swimming in the sea. Skip hired a scooter, it was nice being able to go for a ride around, had that for 3 days which was great!Our own transport! Skip was in his element & classed himself as one of the locals riding around on his scooter and picking up our friends who were staying on the other side of town and calling himself a moto driver. One night we all went to a restaurant called the Snake House which was lovely, hard to explain really, its set in the middle of lush garden maze with terrariums containing pythons, Cobra's & every kind of snake imaginable, parrot's, cockatiels & few other types of bird, crocs, fish & little monkeys. The tables even have a snake housed in the middle which you can see through a glass top. The food was great, a little pricey but worth it!
We took a boat trip out to 3 of the surrounding Islands, Koh
Tas, Bamboo Island & Koh Rung, a day of snorkeling, swimming & sunning.....all good. We ended up staying in Sihanoukville for 9 days in the end, it was great to stay put somewhere for a while & relax, befriended some of the kids who were selling bracelets/kramas and sarongs on the beach, we saw them every day so tended to talk to them when they came over to try & sell us something. They can all speak such good English.
There were also people selling fresh lobster/squid and offering pedicures,manicures and massages.
With much difficulty we decided it was time to leave and continue on with our travels so we headed back to Phnom Pehn before heading down the Mekong to Vietnam.
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