Today was our first day visiting the temples of Angkor and we'd arranged for one of the tuk-tuk drivers to pick us up at 8am. We'd decided to start early to try and avoid the heat of the day - but as it's currently the hottest month of the year here, it's pretty damn hot all day!

After our free breakfast, we met our driver and told him where we wanted to go today. We'd decided to start with the Roluos Group of temples, which are the oldest, but first we had to go to buy our tickets. It cost us $40 each for a 3-day ticket. Out of this 17% goes to the petrol conglomorate who run the site, 68% to the authority responsible for protecting and conserving the temples for operating costs, and 15% goes towards restoration. It's quite a high-tech system at the ticket booths; you get your photo taken and that gets printed on your ticket. There are guards at each temple who check your ticket before you get in.

Once we had our tickets we were on our way to the Roluos Group and our first temple of the 3 days, Lolei. On the way there we started to realise how spread out the temples are. They look quite close together on the map but the journey took about half an hour! Lolei dates from the late 9th century adn used to be on an island surrounded by water. It's quite a small temple so didn't take us long to look around and take photos fo the mouldings in the lime mortar. A young local man started talking to me and when I said where we were from he asked if he could practice his English with us. We soon found out that he is an English teacher at a small school behind the temple. He later showed us around the school and told us more about what they do there. The school consists of one small classroom with a whiteboard at the front and a few posters on the wall, and an even smaller library next door with lots of posters and quite a few books. he showed us one of the reading books that has the text in both Khmer and English and told us that the children study English, Khmer, History and Maths, but he doesn't like teaching Maths! A lot of the kids they teach are orphans and as well as educuation, they offer them food and accommodation, all for free. They don't receive any funding and rely only on donations from 'kind people like us'. When we told him Dave was also a teacher he seemed a little embarrassed but seemed pleased when we said Dave would send him some photos of his school. It was an unexpected but lovely addition to our first temple visit!

Next we visited Prasat Bakong which was a lot bigger and more impressive. It again dates from the late 9th century and was the first significant 'temple-mountain'; to be built. As the names 'temple-mountain' suggests, there were a lot of steps but the views of the complex from the top were spectacular. Also from the top we spotted a large tour group heading our way so decided to leave before we got caught up in their group.

The last of the Roluos Group that we visited was Preah Ko which was the first of the group to be built. This temple consists of 6 towers on a single base (not many steps this time!) and we managed to avoid another large tour group to take some photos. We then had a nice long cool journey in the tuk-tuk to get back to the main temple area where we visited Banteay Kdei and Srah Srang which are right next to each other and from the 12th and 13th centuries. Banteay Kdei is in a ruined state and looks the same as it did when the temples were discovered in the 1860s. It's hard to imagine what it looked like when it was built and full of people. It was fascinating to explore and find all of the intricate carvings and mouldings which appear everywhere you turn. Across the road, Srah Srang was a lot different as it consists of a large platform looking out over the small baray.

The last temple of Day 1 was probably the best - Ta Prohm. Our driver dropped us off at one entrance and said he would wait for us at the other side. It's a massive site so we were glad we only had to walk one way. Before entering, we stopped for a cold drink and had a funny interaction with a little girl selling bracelets and other small items from a plastic basket (they're everywhere - I get very tired of saying 'No thank you'!). She wanted to sell me 3 bracelets for $1 but I didn't want any. So then she changed it to 4 and then 5 for $1. After a while I said I'd give her 500riel (12.5c) for one bracelet. She obviously didn't know how to haggle but just kept repeating 'five for one dollar, five for one dollar', over and over again! Just as i was thinking of giving her a dollar to go away, she disappeared - must have spotted some more potential customers. I got offerred a lot of stuff from little kids that day but none were as persistent as she was - I hope she makes a lot of money and I hope she sees some of it before her 'pimp' takes it all away.

Anyway, back to the temple. Ta Prohm was very interesting as there were huge trees interlaced among the ruins. It was the biggest we'd visited that day and we spent a good few hours wandering around and taking some brilliant photos. Ta Prohm is where some of the Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie was filmed - you can see why they picked it! We saw the tree where they filmed one of the scenes apparently - the one where she picks a flower and then falls through the earth (I wouldn't know!).

By the time we walked out of the other side to meet our driver we were exhausted and ready to go back to the hotel. We cooled off on the tuk-tuk ride back, then arranged to set off at 5am tomorrow to see sunrise at Angkor Wat - can't wait!

We enjoyed a swim in the pool, then relaxed in the room for a few hours before heading to 'Pub Street' for some food. We ate at an Italian then went to bed early, ready for our 4:30am alarm...