We arrived in Siem Reap to the usual crowd of tuk tuk drivers all fighting for our custom. Undecided about where to stay we let one of them take us somewhere after making sure he knew we were on a budget. 15 minutes later after a rather bumpy last 500m, we arrived at Garden Village which was nice and cheap and served beer in their restaurant for $0.50. Before leaving us the driver (Bunnack) got quite persistent about us meeting him the next day to discuss him taking us around the temples. Left with his book of recommendations we agreed to meet the next day. That evening it absolutely chucked it down so we decided to eat at the restaurant on site which was ok but Dean was disappointed with the tiny sized pizza put in front of him, especially as the waiter had gestured a much bigger one. Knackered, we headed to our room and 10 minutes later were in a room filled with every kind of little bug possible. It was gross and so I had to dive in to my bag to find our mosquito net which was right at the bloomin bottom! The next issue was that there was nowhere to hang it!! Grrrr. After much deliberation we decided to drag the bed across the room near to a light on the wall... there's a chance we may have woken a few people up doing this but we weren't sleeping with crickets, ants, beetles, little slivery things and God knows what else. After spending a further 20minutes ridding the bed of anything that crawled, we strategically got in without letting anything else in too. We then finally got some sleep.

Next morning we were woken by the sound of the gecko in our bathroom shouting what sounded like "f*@# you!!" Charming! Where was he when we needed all those bugs eating?! Starving we headed out for some grub and got a right bargain. $3.50 for 2 fried eggs and bacon, a baguette, some butter, cheese and jam, fruit salad and then a pancake. There was also a pot of tea and some fresh orange juice included!! Fat gits, I know :P Needless to say we didn't eat again until 8. After meeting Bunnack late afternoon we decided to have him as our driver around the temples of Angkor. Tickets go on sale at 5 in the evening and you then get a sneak preview by going to watch the sunset at a temple on the top of a hill. After climbing up the hill we had to get up the steepest steps EVER! They were almost vertical and you had to use your hands to get up, plus you had to go up sideways as the steps were really small. Climbing down again was a bit scary!! Although we got a pretty good view, it was really overcast and so we didn't see much of the setting sun.

We were up bright and early and out at 6am the next morning ready to see lots of temples. I'm not going to go in to every individual temple we saw over the 3 days but they were all really cool and interesting. You constantly felt like you were in tomb raider or something and Bunnack proved to be a really good driver, beating all the crowds and passing all the other tourists with his superfast but safe driving :) On the second day we went to the temple where tomb raider was filmed and there were loads of trees growing there, their roots winding their way through the temple walls. Eventually, when the tree dies, the walls collapse and you could see a few places where this had happened. We were out for 4.50am on the final day to go and see Angkor Wat itself as we didn't want to be disappointed by the other smaller temples by doing Angkor first. It was dark when we arrived and so we got to see first light and then the sun coming up over the temple. It was incredible to say the least. The carvings are beautiful and you can only imagine the time and effort that went in to creating them. I think the pictures (when they are finally up) will speak for themselves. We spent a good 3 hours inside and then went off to visit Angkor Thom which is HUGE. Inside it there are several very impressive temples. Our favorite was the Bayon which is a temple with loads of faces on towers, google it, it's awesome. We spent ages wandering around looking at all the different towers and carvings. After about an hour and a half we went and looked around the rest of the temples there and at about 1pm decided we were templed out. I really don't know how people do Angkor in one day and go from 5-5. It's too hot and you get exhausted looking round them, even though they are really interesting. We'd done a lot of climbing steps and must have walked miles those 3 days and so we had a good old drinking sesh that night... but not before a good foot massage!

Whilst we were in Siem Reap we went to the night market a couple of times which was good for a bit of retail therapy after visiting the temples. There was a little pool with fish swimming around it there too. It was advertised as 'Dr Fish' and they claimed that the fish would make our feet smooth by eating all of our dead skin... curiosty got the better of us! It was the most tickly thing I have ever felt! I couldn't stop laughing for about 5 minutes. It has to be said though that the results were great! Our feet were very smooooth :D Most nights we ate on the street as the stalls we REALLy cheap. For $2 you could get a meat dish with rice, a coke and then a fruit shake so it was agreat way for us to save money as the price of the ticket for the temples for 3 days and also Bunnack's fee took up pretty much all of our daily budget. On the last day Dean wandered round town and had a few beers and I went to a spa to get a body scrub and an aromatherapy massage... bliss.

We are now in Malaysia and the KL blog will be up shortly, Dean is uploading pics from Phu Quoc (ages ago i know sorry) as I write.Most of the pics for Angkor are on his camera but he's not got his lead on him right now.

Em x