Phnom Pehn

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Phnom Pehn

I will quickly finish up Angkor Wat. The highlight of the Angkor tour was without a doubt Bayon. It was the site with the most intricate details and the most amazing faces. The whole experience was made all the better due to our cunning plan to avoid the swarm of tourists. We decided to have lunch an hour later as all the tourist buses are locked in to pre booked restraunts at 1230 so we had Bayon basically to ourselves. There are 148 faces still intact all of which are in fantastic condition thanks to the ingenuity of the Hindu invaders who instead of destroying the faces of buddha reconditioned them to represent their gods, with little to no work. One of the Hindu gods has three eyes so the Hindu tradies just used a cordless drill to drill an extra eye above the existing two master craftmenship. Angkor Wat was definitly spectacular and if it had of been the first of these ancient structures we had of visited we would have been awestruck as it was I was over it our legs were killing us due to the lack of an escalator on these old towers, you think after all the trekking we've been doing we could handle it, I blame it on the 1 dollar tuk tuks we now get (at first we were paying a ridiculous 3 dollars a journey). The carvings or bas reliefs on the walls were amazing, they don't really come across in the photos. There is a god of justice who decides if you go to hell or heaven, hell looks mighty painful according to the wall you get a spear in the mouth or tied around a tree with an army pulling each side of the rope, heaven didn't look fantastic either you get to carry that same god around most the day. We finished our journey in Siem Reap with a few beers, indian and a $1 tuk tuk home.

We got on the bus to Phnom Pehn around 0830 and were expecting the "King of Bus" service we got in Laos thankfully this bus had an English speaking Bus Hostess and an actual toilet instead of a bucket... Luxury. The roads were also shit loads better than in Laos and the 300 or so Ks only took 6 hours. We also got in in flight movie (Cambodian with no subtitles), I think it was a comedy about a Cambodian prostitute cross dresser who died after she slipped on some soap and haunted the rest of the prostitutes, fascinating. We arrived in Phnom Pehn to a throng of tuk tuk drivers saying "sir sir tik tuk, I take you special place" I was keen Amanda wasn't that keen, it sounded like it was a guy thing. Disappointed we tuk tukked it to our hotel, which is nice but a fair walk out of town. We plan to check out the National museum and Royal Palace tomorrow and the killing fields and S21 the following day. I really need to go to the toilet.

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