We left to Siem Reap on 17th May, with John, Mickey and Sam. The journey took about 5 hours but went fairly quickly as we had treated ourselves to a luxury bus with big leather reclining seats. We had arranged to stay in a guest house recommended but the travel agency, and when we arrived there was a tuktuk driver, with a sign saying "Mr Mickey" waiting for us.

The guest house was nice, and we got three big huts next to each other for the bargain price of five dollars a night. Alan was pleased because he managed to catch the second half of a Liverpool match in the guest house bar while we ate. The food was pretty bad. We played some cards for a bit and met two English guys called Mark. Later on we decided to go out and we walked to the road to a club called Soksan.

It was big and tacky looking and quite seedy, but as there was a big group of us it was good fun and we had a dance and a few drinks. Later we found you could hire a private room and sing karoke for as long as you wanted so that's what we did. It was pretty horrendous, the girl who was assigned to us to work the video machine was not impressed at all. It was funny and we stayed for quite a while before heading back to the guest house.

Woke up the next day with loads of bites covering my arm (see photo). Not sure where they came from as we had a mosquito net. It looked freakish and the people in the guesthouse kept grabbing my arm and asking me about it, and getting their mates to come and look. We didn't do much that day, just had a wander round the town, and did a bit of interneting. The others went to the market but we decided to give it a miss. Later we wished we'd gone cos we heard about a fish massage John got. This is where you put your feet in a tank of tiny fish and they swarm around you nibbling off the dead skin. Looked like a strange experience, Alan wanted to try it.

Later we all went for a curry in a big group with some other girls we met in the guest house. There was a set menu and most people went for the chicken vindaloo. We thought it would be safe as currys here don't seem to be as hot as they are at home. Alan thought it was just right, but Mickey and John struggled as they normally go for a korma. They had to ask for yoghurt to cool it down. It was quite funny. The food as very tasty though and we were absolutely stuffed by the end of the meal. We had a couple of drinks but tried to get an early night as we planned to get up before 5am the next day to go and see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. There was a big toad in our room, Alan had to chase it out with a stick.

The early start the next day was a killer. Seven of us rented two tuks to drive us round the temples for the day and we managed to get there by about 5.30am. The sunrise was a bit of an anticlimax and we wished we had gone later in the day. It was nice though and we got some good photos. After a look around the main temple, Anchor Wat, we had a quick overpriced breakfast at one of the stalls then got in our tuktuks and got driven to the next temple, Bayon. This temple had faces built into the ruins and is very famous. There were loads of ruins and it was a bit of a maze walking around it. Next our driver took us to another temple. They are all quite far apart so you need a tuktuk to get around all the main ones. The next temple we went to had very step stepped sides and signs warning that you climbed at your own risk. It was a bit of a workout getting to the top and scary going back down. A guide told us that it took aroun 20 year to built the temple. Just after it was completed the road was struck by lightning and caved in slightly, they considered this bad luck and the temple and surrounding grouns were never used again.

Finally we went to a temple surrounded by jungle. This is now known as the Lara Croft temple as parts of the film Tomb Raider were filmed there. There we massive trees with big roots growing out of the stone. There was also passed a band made up of landmine victims, and Mickey joined nin with them for a bit with the bongo he had just bought. At Ankgor Wat vistors get hassled an unbelievble amount by the locals selling stuff. Kids all crowd around you and won't take no for an answer, Everytime we got of our tuktuk people from neary stalls were shouting at us to come in and others were all crowding round with tshirts, postcards and the like. Onoe guy took our photo then came back five minutes later with it printed on a tacky plate. We looked grumpy. We thought it was funny so we bought it.

By the time we had been round all the temples it was about 1pm and we had been there for about 6 or 7 hours. There were hundreds of smaller temples we didn't see, but it was so big it would take a week to do it all properly. We headed back to our hotel feeling tired out.

In the afternoon we had some lunch and Alan had a few hours nap. We booked a bus back to Penom Pen the next day. In the evening we went out for an Mexican and we met an Irish guy called Brian. The food was pretty rubbish. Then we all went to the cleverly named Anghor What? bar and had gin and tonic. I got a free tshirt (XXL) which I am now using as a sleeping tshirt. We ended up going to Soksan club again, with another rendition of karaoke. We were really tired after such a long day and we eventually got to bed about 3am.

The next day we were leaving so we said by the Mickey and Sam. We were going back to PenomPen for a night to pick up our Vietnam visas, then heading to Sianukville, where we planned to meet John. We got the bus back at about 11am, feeling a bit rough...