Our arrival at Siem Reap was crazy! The Cambodians are becoming excellent at finding every little way of individually making the most that they can out of tourists. One of many fine and simple examples is that tour companies sell your name on to guest houses in your destination cities. This meant that we had a tuk tuk driver with a "Mr Graham" sign to greet us from the bus - but boy were we pleased to see him!

Behind large, security controlled, gates was a big crowd of pushing and screaming tuk tuk drivers all fighting for your custom (sad really - the ride into town is only US$1). With our name, our driver (Mr Linh) was allowed into the "compound" and, with the help of security we could push ourselves through the crowd.

Mr Linh drove us into town free if we stayed at the guest house that sent him which, as it turned out, was new, really nice, really cheap and run by a sweet family so we stayed. Mr Linh is not paid by the guest house to do this though - he pays them for the privilege!........hoping that he can win your custom for touring the temples over the next few days....which on this occasion (as he too was dead sweet, charged the going rate and spoke great English) he did - so everyone's a winner!

Siem Reap is a tiny place that almost entirely exists as the place from which you can visit the Angkor temples and, for the last two and half days, we have done just that and it has been absolutely fantastic, right up there with the best of everything that we have done.......again!

The first afternoon we collected our passes for the next three days and, along with the rest of Siem Reap, headed up Phnom Bakteng to watch the sun set over the Cambodian countryside. Thankfully, as there are so many major sites spread over a 26km circuit and our guide helped us time things to avoid the masses, the next two days were spent exploring in relative peace. Some complexes and even areas of the main temples we often had almost to ourselves which we were not expecting in high season.

The Angkor temples have survived the last 1,000 years as they were the only structures made from stone or brick but the whole area used to also house 1 million people and it is really amazing to try and take it all in and imagine life when everything was in full flow. It is also staggering how they managed to bring all the huge stones the 50km from the nearest mountains in those days. Although it was a few thousand years before it makes Stone Henge look like childs play!

We spent our first day moving around the shorter of the two circuits by tuk tuk, ending in the main Angkor Wat site and had loved every minute of it. The second day we were excited to be getting an opportunity to see more and as well as visiting the extra sites on the larger circuit we also paid another visit to the major sites of Bayon and Angkor Wat. One regular sight that puts the age of the temples into perspective is seeing huge trees that are clearly hundreds of years old growing on top of the temples. It is strange to see tree roots so far above ground and becoming an embedded part of such old buildings!

We have taken hundreds of photos (which no doubt we will try and bore you all with when we get back!) and could quite happily spent at least a week here re-visting and re-visiting every day.......or even volunteer for one of the many conservation teams!

For those who have been before us, as well as the major sites, we really liked Banteay Kdei - very peaceful and beautiful. For those that haven't been........be sure to do so one day.

Tomorrow we are flying to Ko Samui in Thailand to lie around on some beaches and do absolutely nothing!