Wednesday & Thursday

Unfortunately Wednesday morning wasn't a good one. Not long after waking up, I went to jump down from the top bunk and had my phone slide off the bed with me which landed face down and completely smashed the screen. Lauren and I had planned to go and see the temples of Angkor (8th wonder of the world) so I was really upset I wouldn't be able to take any photos. We went to a little phone shop who said I'd struggle to get it fixed with the water festival going on as lots of people take holiday. He was trying to get me to leave my phone with him for the day but I was concerned he'd fix it and I could lose my phone data so I kept it with me and thought to check my insurance policy etc as well as checking what the Internet cafe times were to try and get my phone backed up. I messaged home to say what had happened and we carried on with our trip to the temples this time wearing the right attire.

The order of the temples we did was: Angkor Wat, Bayon, Takeo, Ta Prohm, Banteay Kdei. Angkor wat is the main one, we got there about half 11 and began wondering around. There were large crowds of people and although this was annoying I still enjoyed it and felt it was interesting. We even found our first monkey just sat eating on the way into one of the arch-ways. We did a lot of walking and Lauren took pictures with her professional camera so I won't be able to get them up for a few months when she takes them off. We had a lot of people staring at us because we were white, we caught a four year old girl taking pictures of us and even had a girl our age come and ask to her photo taken and then kissed us on the cheek and said thank you. We felt that these people probably rarely saw westerners and I didn't mind at all they were very friendly! When we'd had enough of the heat and looking around this one, we went back to the area the tuk tuk driver said he'd pick us up from but he wasn't there. We ended up grabbing some fruit and an ice cream and walked all around the car park at least 3 times before Lauren started panicking. I suggested we sat and had a drink in the restaurant which was ridiculously expensive, and hoped that maybe we were just quicker than he had expected looking around the temples and that he'd come back for us. About an hour later he turns up as it starts raining and we both felt a bit annoyed but carried on onto the next temple.

I really liked the next one, it had loads of carved faces everywhere and there were less people there. The ones after that were also good and some were spread out so you had a little walk inbetween where there would have been loads of cool places to sit and have a picnic. It was cooler now it had rained to walk around and the clouds helped from the heat of the sun, but there were still a lot of steep steps we had to take our flip flops off to climb. After a lot of trekking we stopped off for a sandwich and were then a little rushed onto the temple where they had filmed tomb raider, as our tuk tuk driver hadn't explained earlier that the last temple closes at half 5. Having taken some action shots at the tomb raider one, we ran onto the last temple for the sunset view. When we got there we hadn't expected it to be a 15minute up-hill walk which completely knackered us. At the top people were queuing to get up to it in theme park fashion and we were both annoyed that we were back at a place with crowds of people. We went up and took a couple of pictures and decided not to wait the half hour for sunset as it was so busy, and returned back down the hill. It was sad to see elephant rides going on at the bottom...we got back in the tuk tuk and returned to the hostel. That evening Dylan, Lauren and I went for a nice curry and I had one street cocktail with them before heading back to the hostel for an early night while they went back out to party.

I remember waking up in the night hearing huge booming sounds and was worried it was a bomb and then realised where I was and that the water festival was on and that it would have been fireworks. Lauren got back early hours in the morning so I left her sleeping whilst I went to the Internet cafe to try and see what I could do about my phone. My sister and dad had said my insurance would cover the damage but it had to be sent back to the uk and I would have had to back my phone up to save data. I couldn't backup my phone as the screen wouldn't let me unlock it to tell it to trust the computer so I was stuck. After 2 hours of fiddling around and trying to find an apple shop online, I randomly showed the guy who was managing the Internet cafe who was sat next to me my smashed screen and said it wasn't working. He was very helpful in trying to get it to work on his computer, and then explained he knew a shop 5 minutes away that did his where they didn't lose any of his data. I decided to take the gamble and go and get it fixed. He hadn't explained I'd need to get on the back of his motorbike but I thought it would be fine to trust him and got on. The shop quoted me $110 and said they could do it in 30minutes so I decided to just get it sorted and my friend hung around and took me to an atm and then dropped me back at the hostel when all was resolved. Lauren was just coming out the hostel to go for breakfast as we were pulling in looking very puzzled at me on this random motorbike. I gave him $5 and said thank you (I think his name was Bangor) and said I'd likely be in the shop the next day to sort my pics out.

I was in a great mood to have got it back and sorted and we spent the day relaxing by the pool. Lauren had been to the market and bought me some new earrings to cheer me up which Was lovely of her, and we went to a nice bbq place for dinner where you cook your own meat. Dinner was delicious and afterwards we went across the road where we'd been watching a band playing from where we'd been sat eating dinner, and had many drinks enjoying the music. The night finished with us both getting up and slow dancing to Ed sheeran's thinking out loud, and we popped back and saw Dylan at his hostel before going to bed.

xxx