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Published: March 26th 2008
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Arrived in Siem Reap after a surprisingly pleasant 6 hour journey which flew past pretty quickly thanks to Jensen from Singapore who i sat next to and was going to check my travelblog for updates so hi Jensen if you're reading this!
The tuk tuk drivers hassled me as soon as i stepped off the bus and tried to carry my backpack onto their tuk tuk before i'd even decided where i was going and for how much! I eventualy went with 1 of them who dropped me at my accommodation but who hassled me again saying he wanted to be my driver for the next day to go to the temples and pick me up at 4.30am! I was so hot and beginning to lose my patience so gave in as he had offered me a good deal for the tuk tuk anyway so thought i should take advantage of it! I settled for a GBP 1.50 a night dissmal room which had a bed and just about enough room to put my backpack on the floor and the shared bathroom down the hallway was disgusting but i was determined at that point to save money and rough it!
I wandered out to explore Siem Reap and found the local market and very aptly named Bar Street which i was very excited about sampling! I went back to my room and it was thoroughly depressing and i was at this point on my own and hadn't met anyone here so i cheered myself up by upgrading to a lovely tiled floor clean room with my own bathroom for GBP 2.50 a night! Unfortunately i still encountered 2 visitors in the form of cockroaches in my lovely room, 1 each night and was not very brave even when i was drunk - i squealed and ran out of the room in my pjamas and got the owner of the guesthouse to come and remove the first one for me and on the second night i got a little braver and dealt with him myself by batting the cockroach out of the door with my flip flop so think he might have had a bit of a headache!
My tuk tuk driver picked me up the next morning at 4:30am as planned and i wondered what the hell i was doing as i wandered with my maglite in the dark
to Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise. It was a little cloudy that morning so not an amazing sunrise but still quite beautiful and very exciting to be there at that time. Angkor Wat was very impressive and i did a 17 kilometre circuit tour of the temples from sunrise to sunset that day. Absolutely shattering as i climbed up every temple possible and seem to be getting over my fear of heights! Having started with Angkor Wat some of the smaller ones didn't really compare but i really liked the Ta Phrom tomb raider temple which was fun to explore.
It is very strange travelling on your own, one minute i was wandering around the temples on my own feeling a little bit lonely and bursting to talk to someone wondering if i would meet anyone in Siem Reap at all, then later that afternoon i bumped into 3 girls who were on the minibus with 22 people in it crossing the border a few days before so we got talking and i also got a facebook message from a Columbian boy, Felipe who we met trekking in Thailand who was in Siem Reap so we all met
up that evening and headed to Angkor Wat? bar and got drunk and had a good night! You do experience real highs and lows being on your own, the highs definitely outweigh the lows though and i am really enjoying it, it's all very character building as my mum would say!!!
I treated myself to a little lay in the next morning and then set off to the Banteay Srei temple which Kiki had recommended to me which was about an hours tuk tuk ride away. It was lovely with such intricate detail in the stone carving which it is said must have been built by a woman as they were too fine for the hand of a man! I felt a little templed out after that so headed back to my luxury room to chill out before meeting up with the girls - Annabelle, Ash and Jessie for a meal. We then met Felipe and headed to the night market which was really lovely before having an early night ready for the next early morning with an 8am start and 12 hour journey to Bangkok.
The bus looked relatively normal and had aircon (which broke halfway through
the journey so we roasted in the midday heat!) but i had been told that the road to the border was nasty and really bumpy and uncomfortable to drive on because rumour has it, the airline are paying the government not to build the road so that more people choose to fly to Bangkok rather than take the bus. I noticed some construction signs on route which had a start date of 13 October 2005 - they were moving very slowly indeed as it was still a dirt track! We all thankfully had our own seats in the minibus but there wasn't exactly a lot of room for our backpacks and they were piled up in the isle between the seats so you literally couldn't move anywhere. When we stopped for breaks people were jumping in and out of the windows at the back of the bus because it was easier than trying to get through the assualt course of bags and people to get off at the front! I met a lovely girl from the Midlands who i sat next to and she had travelled in South America so i have yet more helpful info on where to go
and places to stay etc which is good.
I was very sad to leave Cambodia, although Phnom Penh was really hectic and filthy and not really a very nice place to be, the lakeside area was lovely and i had some great experiences there, met some lovely people and really enjoyed it. Would have loved to have headed south to Sihanoukville but needed to get back to Thailand as i was going to meet up with Lisa and Sarah in Ko Samui for some beach action and am really looking forward to seeing them and finding out what they've been up to.
Apologies for being so rubbish at keeping this updated but i have at last gone back through and added text and photos. Keep emailing, it's lovely to hear from everyone and thanks to those of you who sent me ice skating updates - i wont name and shame, you know who you are!! Lisa's dad has recorded the final so will be able to watch it when we get back :o) x
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