After having caught up with our rest it was time to depart Bangkok and head over to our next country Cambodia!

We had to get up early to catch our bus to Siem Reap. The bus was actually full the day before, when we wanted to go originally, but it seemed like such a good company that we decided to delay our departure by a day. What a brilliant decision that was. The bus ride was smooth (organisationally anyway, somewhat bumpy on the road), comfortable and we were even provided with breakfast, snacks and lunch! The border transfer was much quicker as well: stamp in Thailand, apply for visa in Cambodia (watch all the Americans pay an extra 100bhat "processing fee" until we asked the last two why?), receive the visa 5 minutes later and line up for our stamp in Cambodia. Travelling through Cambodia I was struck by how incredibly flat it was (probably something only a Dutch person would recognise). But, before we knew it, we had already arrived in Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat!

After we were delivered at our hotel by a tuktuk free of charge by the bus company, we checked in and after being installed in our lovely hotel, Diamond D'angkor Boutique, we headed to the aptly named Pub Street for drinks and dinner. After a few cocktails at the french style colonial bar The Sun, woven wicker chairs and margarita's are not a bad way to cheer on the evening. At one point we had a girl pass us by who's family was making fun of her as she was only taking a picture pretending to eat one of the fried crickets instead of actually eating one of the ones she bought. Cheekily we mentioned that it was probably a delicacy here to which she offered us one. To her dissapointment we both promptly chucked them into our mouths where, in our turn, we were dissapointed by the lack of taste. Think caramalised chips with some strange textures.

After drinks (and a snack) we proceded for a more serious bite to eat at Genevieve's. Here local Cambodians are given a chance they normally wouldn't have had (judging by our hunchback waiter) and trained in the hospitality business. The food was delicious as well and the Australian owner was nice enough to come over for a chat... We were so pleased that I think this is the first time we ever ended up tipping almost 100% of the bill!

The next morning we got up early to rent bikes and start our exploration of the temples. After about half an hour of biking we finally approached the corner of the actual Angkor Wat only to find we had to buy tickets first. We'd been biking on a parallel road to the one we had intended... oops! After our short detour passed the ticket shop we biked onwards to approach the Angkor Wat along it's causeway. A very impressive sight greeted us, and this was just one of the many, many temples around. We were especially impressed by all the carvings surrounding the temple which have survived since the 9th - 14th century. We even made the effort to climb to the top, with the help of some dubiously steep stairs.

After taking a quick breather and a small bite for lunch in the nearby airconditioning we headed from Angkor Wat to Angkor Thom with the temples Bayon and Baphuon. It's a little humbling to explore these temples which stood in a city with a million inhabitants back in the day and it's a little difficult to put down in words to see these massive structures, perhaps the pictures do the area more justice.

The breeze during the bike ride back was comfortably pleasant compared to the roasting we had while exploring the dark stone temples. We rewarded ourselves with more cocktails when we got back across the road from last night, unfortunately The Sun was much better and we hurried along to dinner. Classic Cambodian food at the Khmer Touch Cuisine was delicious but we had to cut the night short as we had a very, very early morning set up the next day!