After finishing up for our first visit to Phnom Penh, we set off for Siem Reap and to what we hoped would be the most amazing part of our trip so far...Angkor Wat.
The bus journey itself was uneventful, but our arrival at the bus station was far from it! We stepped off the bus and passers by must have thought Elton John was getting off the bus...we were mobbed. Now as a rule travelling over here you get off a bus and people everywhere try to convince you to go to their hotel, but this was ridiculous, they surrounded us and backed us into a corner. People telling you they worked for the bus company, they could gte us free transport to their hotel which was the best in town. After 5 minutes of being unable to move (literraly we were cornered) i screamed at the top of my lungs, and nobody noticed they were all so busy trying to get us to go with them, not that we could hear one from another as they were all shouting as loud as they could. Luckily the police came and saved us, our resucer pushed them all back and put us in a room off to the side so that we could only see about 3 of them at the door way and make our choice. When we settled on one he spoke rather good english and took us for free to a hostel in the towm centre and we settled in, hurrah!
Our driver agreed to pick us up at the ungodly hour of 5am to go and see the sunrise over Angkor wat the following day. So we got up at 4.30am :( and trotted outside, and our carriage (or tuk-tuk) was waiting for us. Considering how many people visit Angkor every year the road to get to it was a bumpy one, anyone ever off roaded in a tuk tuk? Not pretty!
But it was so worth it, the sky was a little overcast and there were quite a few people there but you just find your own spot and sit in awe and the worlds largest religious building and it is beautiful, its amazing, infact there arent many words to describe how good it looks. The sun came up and most of the tourists left and we spent a good three hours wondering round looking at the carvings, and exploring all the nooks and crannies. The phots will do most of the explaining but it was fantatstic, if a little difficult. When poeple tell you that the steps are steep they vastly understate the climb, they are about 4 inches wide and all about 30 inches high, with no hand rail, theres a nice sign at the bottom that reminds you your doing this at your own risk.
After this we headed off to see the other temples, and it was turning out to be an amazing day, warm and sunny. We saw the Bayon (si's favourite) Which has huge stone face carved on just about every possible wall, and they are massive, and theres hundreds of them! All representing eith hindu gods or Buddha. There was also one called Ta Phrom which has been left to nature and is very overgrown and the highlight of which includes the famous tomb raider tree from the film. All in all we spent 10 hours wandering round the temples and we were shattered. We went back home, just in time to beat the rain and had a fish amok (the local dish a sort of peanut and coconut milk curry...its delicous!) we also discovered that our hotel didnt have a kitchen but the house in the next street did. And so they cooked the food then sent it up on a tray on a pulley system...very clever!
Next morning at the more humane hour of 11am our guide collected us for another days trip around the themples except it handt stopped raining, and wasnt planning on it all day. The temples again were spectacular although alittle wetter (as were we) they also had the added attraction of lots of naked children running around and splashing in the waist high puddles that were dotted around. We aent to the temple that supposedly had the best view of Angkor wat, but to be honest you couldnt really see anything, but on its own its quite an impressive temple, a bit like an Aztec pyramid on top of a hill. We planned to see a sunset but as it was so cloudy we had to be happy with the sunrise we got to see.
Our final day in Siem Reap we did not a lot, markets, eating, drinking, (found a bar decked out like an Angkor temple which was nice) before heading back to Phnom Penh on trip number 2.
We stayed at a different guesthouse this time, closer to the hub hub of the river and a major backpacker hangout. We planned on heading out to Sihanoukeville in a couple of days to get some beach action. But had to hang around until we could collect our flight tickets. In the meantime we befriended an Irish bloke and went out for a few drinks and some food. We had a full buffet of cambodian dishes and drank probably a little too much beer but had a fabulous night.
Next day tried to get plane tickets their printer broke and we had to cancel our bus tickets to Sihanoukeville, after a scrap with a very very very rude receptionist we headed off to the beach!
The accomodation itself was nice, very clean, and the beach was lovely. Not much to Sihanoukeville just a beach town, and a riddiculously large (and incredibly ugly) golden lion round about in the middle of it. However there are little shacks that line the sands where you can have food delivered to your sunlounger and at night they have BBQ's on the beach of king prawns, barracuda, squid and all kinds of fish. Also one day whilst laziing on the beach we had some fresh prawns. A woman with a big basket on her head comes over and peels them for you and puts on some herbs and lemon juice...they were delicious! It was all really nice...until the rain came. Never knew that much water could fall from the sky, everything flooded and everything was wet. It made all previous rainfalls look like drizzle and it did this for 3 days, we became very accuainted with the local cinema!
We were so grateful to leave what should have been our week long holiday at the beach and head off to Kampot, that even the share taxi drive didnt phase us. Though we were told it would be a 6 seater when the driver piled 4 people in the back and 4 in the front we just laughed. The driver spent the entire journey driving for 2 hours on somebodys lap! It was hysterical and all the more funny when we reached our Kampot guesthouse only to be told that our driver had just broken the law...its only legal for 7 people to travel in a car not eight!
The adventure had not yet begun however, the reason for coming to Kampot was to see the Bokor hill station. An old french colonical town where the French came on their holidays when they lived in kampot to escape the heat. The hill is set amongst a national park and is quite steep, an amazing feat of engineering when in 1917 the road was paved for the first time...and has not een done since. It was incredibly amusing at first, everyone laughing as we chugged uo the hill in our Toyota Camry, bouncing everywhere, leaves coming through the windows that would not shut, we laughed for 20 mins but after 2 hours to get up there we were not laughing anymore. Imagine being inside a washing machine. It was the most unpleasant and uncomfortable ride (except maybe ou crossing to Vietnam). The to make it all the more fun the rain came, and we had to hold our breath everytime we approached a corner as the cars came hurtling up and down at tremendous speeds. But it was worth it, so creepy. The hill station has been derelict since the early 70's so theres no windows or doors and the building are delapidated, the as it was rainign and foggy, it gave it a real spooky feeling, inside the building with nobody else the wind came whistling through the cracks and blew in all the fog with it as well. There was an old church, hotel, casino, post office and residences of the prince Sihanouk. We ate lunch incide the hotel where some enterprising woman had blocked out the wind by covering the windows with old rice sacks. Then it was time for the long 2 hour journey back down. He did offer to take us on a 2 hour hike into the jungle, in the rain to see an amazing waterfall, but he had tried it the day previously only to find the river too swollen so they couldnt get bear it and had to come back, as it was freezing and lashing it down we all voted unnanimously to just head back and not go on a two hour trek in the mud and rain to see a waterfall that we probably can't get to, even his persuasion of "but you can still hear it from the river!" did't sway us. And so began the desent another 2 hours of river bed road, amazingly on the way up we had no problems, on the way down disaster struck when we got a puncture. We all had to get out and wait for this to e fixed (we didnt mind however like i said it really was an amazing feat that we only got one puncture rather than 12) then we stopped for a couple more waterfalls, and with very sore bottoms we all arrived safely back in Kampot where we headed for the local english pub. We were offered towels and warm drinks and i had the best fish and chips since leaving. The owners had been out there for a couple of years and were slightly eccentric however typically british. The man was from Worcester and she was from London, he was complaining that he couldnt drink as he was on some antibiotics, plus the fact that he had ignored the warning and was hungover from the previous nights antics and he chain smoked like a trooper, going through a pack of 20 while we sat there for maybe an hour- hour and a half.
Finally we headed home to a hot shower, and that evening had a fabulous Sri Lankan meal and were chased by a pack of dogs as we got lost on the way home.
The next morning back to Phnom Penh again, before our flight to Malaysia. We managed to meet up with the Irish fella from out last visit and had some wine and a fish amok (beautiful!) as our final meal. Next day we boarded a plane for the fist time in ages, it was so strange after being used to buses and trains and we were off!