Some more on the temples around Siem Reap:

We took the mini tour of the temples which lasted for a day, it was possible to get two or three day passes and see a lot more but to be honest we saw a great deal on the first and second day and didn't feel the need to see any more.

The subject of all the sunrise photos is Angkor Wat, the world renowned temple that was definitely worth the early start, absolutely stunning and many photo oppurtunities as you can tell, i possibly got a little carried away as that wasn't all of them!

After that we went over to Angkor Thom, a large temple site consisting of the Bayon a large temple and some more smaller ones, the Bayon looked like ruins from far but was still somewhat intact inside, walking around the grounds and looking at the other temples the sun was already beating down, causing mist to rise off the grass and creating an even more mystical atmosphere. Slightly shattered when i got biten by a huge red ant and frightened the life out of Elliot by shreiking and jumping up and down on my own toe - those ants are vicious and i couldn't see what was biting me!

Next we visited Preah Kahn, a maze of long corridos strewn with fallen stones, Elliot had his first encounter with praying in front of a Buddha statue, there are numerous dotted around all the temples, often attended by monks or nuns asking for a small donation in return for being blessed with fertility, stay away ladies, he was blessed many times!! Then came Ta Prohm where they filmed tomb raider, my personal favourite with all the trees invading on the buildings - no restoration work has been done on this one so the jungle has been allowed to wreak it's havoc. Next was Ta Keo, a small undecorated temple that was never finished, we were guided round by a young Cambodian guy who was very knowlegable and told us all sorts of interesting facts, including the reason for all the tiny steps leading up to the towers - apparently so that they could only be climbed sideways, in deference to the gods, only the King could walk normally and he had his own set of stairs, which we climbed a swas much easier. Was fascinating and he was trying to raise money to afford to go to school so we gave him some, there are a lot of young kids trying to sell postcards and bracelets outside the temples, although good salesmen and very persistant you can't buy from them all!

We saw a few more temples that day, all in all was over twelve hours, a special mention goes to our tuc tuc driver Hyvanny who was great and in very good humour all day, even the night before when due to our lack of funds we had to wait 40mins by the side of the road until we were let in free!