We arrived in Siem Reap late yesterday afternoon after 'a journey from hell'. We had been lucky with our previous bus trips and not had many problems, unfortunately our good luck ran out on this trip.

Everthing started out ok and we were picked up as arranged at 6.30 am in Kratie for our trip to Siem Reap. That was the best part of the trip as it went down hill from then. There were four of us travelling and when the bus arrived it has seen better days. It was larger than a minibus and had seats that fold down into the aisle. We were the first into the bus so we were able to choose seats together. Then for the next hour we started to travel around the town and suburbs picking up passengers and their luggage. Except in a small rural town like Kratie the 'luggage' isn't a small bag or case, it is a large box or bin liner, sometimes with holes in so the contents can breath or something larger broken down into pieces, such as furniture being transported in pieces. After picking up a few of these everything was piled on one side on top of our bags and people boarding had to climb over to sit at the back. We finally left Kratie and started out for Siem Reap. Our driver was not too happy by this point and spent a lot of time using his horn to clear traffic in his path.

Every 15 minutes or so we stopped to pick up more people and more items.

Chris and I settled down for a long journey and tried to doze, ignoring the chattering of the adults, the screaming of the children and the occasional crow of a cockerel. I was just nodding off and a large box fell off the pile onto me, so I gave up on that idea. Then, about an hour into our journey we started to hear some strange noises from the gear box, and we ground to halt at the side of the road. Nobody said anything and the driver got out fiddled around, the passengers started to get out and then they started taking off the luggage. That gave us a clue that we were weren't going anywhere fast. One of the passengers spoke a little English and told us a new bus was coming. So we sat under a convenient house on stilts sheltering from the sun watching the road with dust swirling up as vehicles passed. One and a half hours later one of those dust clouds turned into a small minibus and pulled up beside us and we just looked at each other in disbelief as we realised they were going to try to fit us all in. Talk about a pint into a quart pot.

After squeezing on we wanted to get going quickly as the temperature in the bus was rapidly rising and everyone was getting hot and irritable fiddling with the aircon. Then the driver explained the aircon didn't work and we had to open the windows to let the hot air in! By this time I was really cooking and would have quite happily walked just to get out of this tin can death trap on wheels. We had our feet on our luggage and bags on our laps and another six hours on a two lane track masqerading as a road. On top of this the driver started to make up time by driving like a madman, with one hand on the horn overtaking anything that dared impede him for the rest of the journey. Of course it being so hot and the swaying of the van the children who were happily eating their rice and noodles earlier started looking green and then vomited the lot back up over all the luggage...

It was a horrible trip, I have never been so happy to arrive at my destination as I was to arrive in Siem Reap. I now understand why people kiss the ground in thanks for a safe arrival - we were nearly on our knees anyway.

But here we are 24 hours later, sitting on the roof of our hotel, beside the pool enjoying a nice meal after spending the day visiting the wonders of Angkor Wat and the majestic temples. We got up early to hire two bikes (two dollars each - a bargain) and spent the day cycling around the area. We had a lovely day, the early morning was nice and cool and it took about half an hour to get to the ticket office located in the edge of town where they issued a pass with our photo on. Then we beetled off to the temple site, which is enormous, to see as much as we could before the sun got too hot. We were certainly wowed by the enormity of it all as we climbed the massive structures and wandered through the majestic ruins. We couldn't stop taking photos as the sites were so amazing!
By the afternoon we were beginning to flag and cycled back a quicker route, pausing to rest a couple of times to relieve of our aching bottoms. All in all we think we cycled over 15km, bearing in mind the temperature was about 34°, we did quite well really, in fact the breeze cycling along was quite refreshing until we stopped and then the temperature rose.
We returned our bikes and returned to the hotel to enjoy a nice cool swim in the pool.
Tomorrow we leave for Laos.