Contrary to the apparent date and location of this blog entry, it's actually the 28th January and we're in Vientiane, the capital of Laos! Circumstances have conspired against blog writing, with internet access in North-East Cambodia and southern Laos being rare and, when available, the slowest I've ever experienced, our efforts to cram in as much as possible for Sara's remaining three weeks with us, the different social dynamic of our team becoming four (which I'll come to later - officially, on Jan 1st, it hasn't happened yet!), and the incredibly good value and quality of Beer Lao. However, I haven't managed to keep this up for five months so far to let it slip now, so will endeavour to catch up over the next couple of weeks! Mind you, it seems that my fellow blog writers across the globe have been suffering from similar lapses, which does make me feel better. Shawn and Sabine, I see it's the 27th December and you're in Ratanikiri Province, Cambodia, and Stephen, I see you had New Year's Eve in Mancora, Peru yesterday! Oh, I remember the early days in Africa when you were updating every day!

And so, back to Cambodia's temple town, Siem Reap, where we stayed for almost a week. It wouldn't normally have warranted that long a stop, but we figured we'd need a day to familiarise ourselves and make plans for New Year's Eve, and then a day to recover as well, before even contemplating any temples. Our host at Dragon Guesthouse in Phnom Penh had told us that he had a "cousin" in Siem Reap with a nice guesthouse, so we decided to try it our for a night, just to make the most of the complimentary pick-up from the bus station, which we'd heard from other travellers along the way could be a bit of a price-hike scam that was hard to avoid. Naturally we got the "you look, you like, OK, you look, you no like, OK also" line, but reckoned just staying at least one night would be easier than having to look around for accommodation late on, and potentially having a sudden pick-up charge levied too. Anyway, as it turned out, Golden Takeo Guesthouse was one of the nicest places we've stayed at throughout our travels! About ten minutes walk up and across river from Siem Reap centre, in the quiet Wat Bo area, with a bunch of other guesthouses and restaurants (generally one is also the other), all clustered around a small set of dusty, red backstreets. It had a fantastic rooftop restaurant area for eating and chilling out (once the deafening, two day Cambodian wedding around the corner had finished, that is!), with a free to use paddling pool filled with fish masseurs (not really sure how they're generally described, but there are dozens of them, and they gently nip at your feet, I imagine picking off dead skin; you pay a couple of dollars for the privilege in the centre of Siem Reap), and delicious Khmer food (plus the best omelette breakfast to date) served by two of the nicest, friendliest ladies I've ever met. Despite the language barrier, they couldn't do enough for us, and always with massive grins plastered across their faces (even when making us packed breakfast at half four in the morning, to send us off to Angkor Wat to see sunrise with!). And Prom, the owner, spoke excellent English, and also gave us all the help we needed. Incidentally, as we were leaving, I happened to ask him about his "cousin" in Phnom Penh, and he was entertainingly honest, explaining that he wasn't a cousin, nor even a friend, and that in fact he didn't even like the guy! It was a friend of a friend or something, who'd set up the connection for business benefits, and who'd seemed OK at first, but then completely abused the relationship by turning up in Siem Reap with a mate one time, using rooms for free, getting hammered every night, and even borrowing money from Prom to pay for the prostitutes he brought back! So Prom said he didn't point travellers in the direction of Dragon Guesthouse anymore, although if this guy wanted to send people to Golden Takeo then fine, that was up to him.

Which leads me on to think of something else, actually, as I remember that Prom said "he came back with a girl and asked to borrow two dollars for her", which, compared to the lady of the night I encountered on the way back from a bar in Siem Reap one night (I was on my own, Paula and Sara not fancying Liverpool v Bolton in the sports bar; wish I'd made the same decision in hindsight, another Hodgeson horror show), who didn't just try to grab me by the arm, who said "you come with me, massage, only twenty dollars", and that's the biggest foreigners tax I've come across yet! Ten percent of the price for locals! (That said, I have no issue in principal with the one price for locals, another price for foreigners rule we come across from time to time).

But on to New Year's Eve, which, after long anticipation, flashed by in no time at all, just as it always does back home. We employed cautious tactics, like the old people we are, and eased our way into the evening with a decent feed (Mexican), the girls sipping on a couple of ice Margaritas and myself a couple of glasses of Angkor draft. And surprisingly, despite the undoubted presence of plenty of twenty-one year old Aussie and British backpackers, prime early casualty candidates, the rest of the town seemed to be moving at the same pace. Only a couple of hours before midnight, we were able to casually wander down Pub Street (so called for a reason, the heart of Siem Reap's nightlife), where locals were still making adjustments to speakers and things, and people were still sitting back, relaxing at tables at the street edge and on balconies above. And then suddenly, I'm guessing with little more than an hour to go, we were heading back down Pub Street to find a suitable bar, and bam, the whole street was the party, one big multicultural dance floor with all manner or tunes pumping from massive speakers right in the middle! It was a fantastic sight, and it was great because it seemed neither like a locals do with some foreigners along for the ride, nor like a backpacker party with some token locals, but everyone was just jumbled together, a sea of bouncing, cheering faces, with Europeans, Americans and Aussies, Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, and local Cambodians of all ages. Anyway, to cut yet another overly long story short, the pace of Angkor draft consumption picked up, and the girls' glasses of Margaritas became buckets, the night became a bit hazy, and the anticipated need for a day of recovery was a well thought out plan. A resounding success of a street party, although perhaps health and safety experts might not agree, given that I woke up with firework ash all over my T-shirt!

That said, when it came around, the 2nd January 2011 did bring with, for me, at least, a slight sense of relief. Despite the excitement of different experiences, I think the Christmas and New Year period is the only time away when, really, we'd have preferred to have been back home with friends and family. We enjoyed ourselves, but at the same time, it was a small hurdle that was nice to get over, and to just be able to start travelling again. We still don't know exactly how long we'll be away (initial predictions, if I recall correctly, ranged from me pragmatically not ruling out only a couple of months if we didn't click with it, to Jim's drunken estimate of about four or five years!), but I'm pretty sure we'll be back for Christmas 2011!

On to temples, though. Finally! Although I won't dwell on them, because I'm sure that if anything's more yawn-worthy than a dull temple, it's got to be hearing about someone else's visit to one! Well, we read the Lonely Planet guide to the area, and took on board advice from afar via Facebook (thanks again to Mike H, Emma, Mary, Caz, Ed W and Mr Craig Saviour), and then ended up going to most of them, because despite my reservations, having been a tad bored by the Forbidden City and the many churches and cathedrals of Eastern Europe, they were amazing!

Temples day one was actually New Year's Eve daytime, as we decided to tuk tuk (can I use that as a verb? Well, I just have done...) out to Beng Melea, which is on its own, about 60km north-east of Siem Reap, and not part of the Angkor admission ticket, hence not a waste of a day. Which gave us our first taste for more, because it was a fantastic, vast, crumbling ruin, with huge blocks of stone entwined with massive tree roots, straight out of an Indiana Jones film set (confession: that's not original, but how the Lonely Planet described it. But hey, if it ain't broke...)! We clambered in and around it for an hour or so, led by a local site caretaker, and, novelty factor, probably took about two hundred photos between us. And, pleased with ourselves for getting one in the bag pre-New Year's Eve celebration, headed home. Sorry, I said I wasn't going to dwell on temples. An inadvertent lie, but I'll speed up now. Temples day two (on bikes, this time), in order (which will obviously mean nothing to everyone who hasn't seen them, but for my own record): Prasat Kravan (small, but polished, a nice one to build up from (this is my opinion, Paula's and Sara's was simpler: "a bit crap")), Banteay Kdei (large, impressive, particularly good face carved above the gate), Sra Srang (reservoir opposite, serene, nicely cut out), Pre Rup (very high, excellent views over the surrounding jungle), Eastern Mebon (poorer relation of Pre Rup, but good elephant statues), Preah Neak Poan (original half temple, half pools of water combo, nicely chilled out, just the place for me to recover for a short while from mild sun stroke), and finally Ta Prohm (fantastic finish, Beng Melea-esque, still properly wrapped up in jungle, scene of Lara Croft doing something or other). Temples day three (back on tuk tuk): Angkor Wat for sunrise (stunning, incredibly well preserved, although being there for sunrise along with thousands of other tourists definitely over-rated), Angkor Thom, including the Terrace of Elephants (a wall, basically, but brilliant if you like elephants, which I do; in my top three animals, possibly even number one), the Baphuon (looked alright, but largely inaccessible compared to others), an hour and a half walking anti-clockwise around the south west corner (nice little flirtation with nature and break from crowds; saw a snake, result!), the Bayon (temple of 216 faces, loved it, great idea, although beginning to flag by this point), and finished with Preah Khan (solid, good all-rounder, possible contender for best enormous, intertwining tree roots, despite Ta Prohm's many entries). Ten hours of templing (another new verb!). Hardcore. And then finally day four, at which point, as the saying goes, we were a bit "templed out". By tuk tuk once more, Banteay Srei (finely detailed, not my thing so much, but best overall site presentation), the Landmine Museum (not a strangely named temple, but is as the name suggests; small but really interesting), and Phnom Bakheng for sunset (great views, but sunset overly busy and by no means spectacular, should have just gone earlier). And that's it! Twelve temples, one wall, a reservoir and a (contemporary) museum. Excellent. The end.

The only remaining thing that sticks in my mind is the odd situation I found myself in on the last night, with one of our tuk tuk drivers, Hom. A young guy, who admittedly was one of the better drivers we've had. Friendly, reliable, a bit of English, very good at overtaking other tuk tuks. Anyway, he asked me to set up a Facebook page for him, not an unreasonable request. Looking back, I think this was with the grand vision of his tuk tuk services being marketed around the world, thus earning him local fame and fortune, as I heard about an Aussie girl, a web designer by trade, who'd done this for another tuk tuk driver, and also manages it for him from afar. Word may have got around. In fact, it turned out that he must have been hoping for the same from me, not realising that said Aussie girl's skills and generosity aren't standard Westerner attributes, as he was about as familiar with a keyboard as the controls of a space shuttle, so clearly wasn't going to be able to do much with a Facebook profile. He does now have one, though, which I do intend to populate with a bit of info soon, as I set him up with an email address and Facebook account (both with address of his name and password of "tuktuk", which hopefully he'll be able to remember!). But then, having had this pretty simple request granted, he insisted on taking me out to a local cafe for a Cambodian pudding as a thank you. Which was fine, I wasn't remotely hungry but fruit in condensed milk did taste surprisingly good, but he went on to explain at great length that he now considered me to be a good friend of his (not that he wasn't a nice guy, but we'd hardly spoken; thankfully, he'd been concentrating on his tuk tuk driving!), and he'd very much like Paula and I to come and visit his family home in the countryside, and subsequently attend his wedding at the end of the month! Actually, funnily enough, I think it started today. Which might have been cool, had we genuinely gelled in friendship fashion, but the reality of it was that it was all a bit weird. So I said possibly, I'll have to let you know, um, I need to get back to the guesthouse now, and we escaped Siem Reap early the next morning.

Next entry, heading north, Kratie, on the Mekong river!