Cambodia: Siem Reap

After yet another bus journey we arrived in Siem Reap, which is probably the unofficial capital of Cambodia and our favourite destination so far.  We splashed out and bought the expensive (for us) 3 day Angkor Archaeological Park ticket (400Km squared) and I think we made the most of it.  It's a fantastic place which encompasses remains of past Khmer capitals from the 9th-15th centuries, so lots of varied architecture.

Day one, Rosie was suffering from a case of "bus air-conditioning cold" so we chilled out at our lovely hostel, played some chess and drank smoothies (which by the way, we have almost every day, because they are so cheap and gewd).


Day two I managed to drag Rosie out of bed at around 4:30am and venture out to Angkor park on our rented bikes.  We decided to spend sunrise at Ta Prohm (a smaller temple made famous in the Tomb Raider film) rather than at the tourist jammed Angkor Wat.  This was a great decision as we had the place to ourselves for about an hour with the eery presence of the tree covered temples.

After this we headed towards the larger temple complex of Bayon whilst stopping at a few other amazing temples onroute.  We then headed North and rode around some of the smaller temples (but no less impressive) before heading back to Angkor Wat to finish.  We were worried at this point the main attraction may seem underwhelming considering all the temples we had seen that day.  Nothing to worry about here, as we turned the corner we were presented with a breath-taking image of one of the world's most famous temples.

Day three was my turn to suffer from the dreaded cold but headed out (admittedly later and by tuk tuk) to Kbal Spean 50km north of Siem Reap.  Then came a rocky climb (which almost finished me for the day) up a dried up river to check out the glyphs and runes underneath the crystal clear river.  Once we got back down I thought it best to collapse in a hammock and sleep for an hour while Rosie chatted to our tuk tuk driver.  We stopped at some other temples on the way back and our driver bought us some sticky rice balls with a sugar centre covered in coconut shavings, which were amazing.

Next day was another rest day, but the day after we headed out into the countryside to look at a few more temples (crumbly ones) and the stilt houses built to deal with the yearly floods.  Lots of drying fish in the sun here, which smelt awful.  Our tuk tuk driver bought us another food gift of sticky rice and black in a char-grilled bamboo stalk, yummy.

Then it was off to Thailand!!!