Angkor Wat.

So we left early from PP and headed to Seam Reap for the temple-fest that is Angkor Wat. WE checked into a guest house that Rob and Andrea had recommended, managed to get air con for 4 quid and were mighty relieved as it was scorching. We tried to set ourselves up with a guide but they were all hired already or out of our price range, however we had bought a kind of comprehensive guide book from a land mine victim previously(one of the occassions were you don't mind being out haggled) so tried to just find a tuk tuk dude to get us there.

3Day pass purchased (i know three days in like a museum! it sounds mental like we've become old like parents all of a sudden (just kidding folks) but it takes a long time to see it all and there are somethings you don't want to miss.)

when you buy your pass you get in for free that evening to see the spectacular sunset. Soo we did that and having obviously left it a bit late we legged it up the touristy hill past fortunately shorter of leg Japanese tourists to bagsy a good spot looking out over a beautiful sunset. Obviously we sat down right next to (you know who) Loz and Niki. and despite the crowds enjoyed a very peaceful and historic sunset. We drove home with vague plans to meet L & N the next day for tea , but knowing we'd bump into them sooner or later whatever we arranged.

We had a rather delicious tea as the lonely planet came up trumps with a decent restaurant (stay tuned for tomorrows review to find how lonely planet dropped the eggy ball all over my omlettey shoes)

having started at about 6 to get up to seam reap we went to bed. a few hours were taken up with sleep, i shan't document these fully for you...

it was however only a few hours as we had been told to check out sunrise over angkor wat as well. so 5am we are off and racing to temple one (for those who don't know angkor wat firstly shame on you, you clearly have access to the internet so google it. secondly basically cambodian kings in the 9th 10th 1th century's thought on a grand scale so when they wanted a house they built a city (like warwick). Angkor wat is the name of the biggest temple in te region but within 70 Km or so there are loads and loads of these massive stone temples. i love that they thought so big, proper showing off..

anyway, back at angkor Wat we stumbled round in the dark having been dropped off by our friendly driver who i called Happy, but jennifer reckons his name was Bunny. the sun came up and it was nice but the temple was a little bit Wow. like 5 levels going up the equivalent of say 7 or 8 stories nowadays , still pretty much all in tact, everyone is allowed to go pretty much everywhere with no safety ropes or anything, it would have been a death trap in England but apparantly people abroad are responsible and are trusted to act maturely so we saw no injuries.

The Moat to that temple is huge in itself like hundreds of football pitches in size and were not talking 5 aside. then we drove round a few more temples and stuff of similar magnitude, we had Happy for the day and he guided us magnificently. Jennifer will probably say more about each individual place we visited but we did about 10 in the first day and got home fairly shattered.

the next day we headed out to a littler temple about 35k away which is supposed to be dead pretty, obviously we passed a certain couple of belgians on the way, 2 tuk tuks emergency stop as the girls formulate a social plan. (we are to meet at a bar for drinks with some other brits who are all having our last day in Seam Reap.)

The pretty temple was pretty but crowded and to be fair the only one that was. we had heard stories of horrific crowds, but none relaly materialised to affect our enjoyment. The place is littered with urchins trying to sell you a bracelet or book or something, endlessly bleating "MADAAAAAAAAM" but they all speak perfect English and have a come back ready for every way possible you can think of to say "NO"

No i have one = Have two, one for boyfriend

He has one = your mother she would like one just one dollar

no thank you = you hate your own mother, buy her the book

One little girl with huge brown eyes said to me, Sir buy cold drink from me or you make me cry.

we had a chat, talked it through, i didn't buy her drink and she didn't cry, someone learnt a valuable lesson that day, and then it was back in the HappyMobile and off to more temples. ( Jen - I bought bracelets from many urchins, many of you will receive them for xmas) My favourites were the ones that had huge great trees growing on top of them, it's really weird to see maybe if you google Ta Prohm you can see some pictures or maybe one day when we are all really old and tired i'll hire someone young and clever to upload our photo's for us and you'll see it then.

another long day , yadda yadda, then out for a few beers, a great curry, a quick game of is it a he or a she and the girls danced ( after just a couple of beers i couldn't force myself onto a not too crowded dance floor to Gasolina) and we all went to bed happy.

Here we bid goodby to Lore and Anika, i think we might miss them almost as much as you readers will, they were cool. and without them we boarded a bus to Bottombang with heavy hearts....

( Jen - the best bit aobut angkor wat is that you get to climb up all the temples. Some of them were practically deserted adn they are huge. Our book was very good at explaining the significance of all the carvings, and we now know a lot about buddhist and hindu legend. Our compass came into its own as well as lot of times our books kept directing us to the carving on the east side blah blah and things can get tricky when all the temples are compeltely symetrical. I can't begin to describe the scale of the thing.... and not only did we bump into Lore and Anika, of course, but Bruce's housemate Rich(?) from Sheffield. Marvellous stuff. I also took notes on several good recipes of dishes from Siam Reap ( evan can't spell) and will be trying these out on you all at a later date.)