17/10/08 Our journey started at 7.30 when we got in a minibus with some other people who were doing the same journey. Four hours later, we arrived at the border with Cambodia. You need a visa to get in, but you can get these on the border - the cost (about 25 pounds) was twice what it said it would be in the 2007 guidebook, but nevermind! The process of getting these and then going through passport control etc. took a couple of hours, and then we split into two taxis for the rest of the journey. We were rather surprised at the taxis because we had booked a non-VIP coach which would have taken another 8 hours to get to Siem Reap, so it looked like we had been upgraded (the taxis only took another 4 hours.) I tried to sleep on the way but the road in Cambodia was bone-rattling, so I didn't manage to. It was really interesting just looking at the landscape though - you can tell it's the rainy season here at the moment because most of the fields are flooded. I think some of it was rice paddy fields. The landscape was incredibly flat, and the road was raised out of the water. The earth is very red, which looks quite aesthetic. We passed through several villages/hamlets where a lot of the buildings were on stilts, and coconut palms were everywhere. The villages did look poverty-stricken though. We passed a lot of boys and men standing and wading waist deep in the water in the fields, cutting vegetation with billhooks and throwing out nets, wearing traditional looking hats with wide brims. There were lots of cows and water buffalo too, both in the water and on the bits of dry land.

18/10/08 We looked round Siem Reap today and wandered round the Old Market - I bought a book about children's accounts of the time during the Khmer Rouge regime, and a top. There were stalls with strings of sausages, dried beef and strips of fish hanging up outside (and even a pig's head), as well as stalls selling exotic-looking fruit and vegetables, and ones selling tourist souvenirs and clothes/ cloth/ shoes/ tools etc. It was really sunny today, in contrast to yesterday.

We had dinner at the Red Piano, which is famous for Angelina Jolie eating there when filming 'Tomb Raider'. The food was very good - we had a Khmer dish of fried beef and green capsicum with rice. In a street nearby which we passed, there was a group of mine victims sitting on the pavement playing different instruments for money.

19/10/08 Angkor Wat today - we hired bikes ($2 each) so we could cycle inbetween the different temples, rather than hire a tuktuk which would have cost $15. It was a good decision, because it was lovely being able to exercise by cycling rather than walking for a change! I say $ because in Cambodia they accept US dollars and Thai baht as well as their national currency, the riel. Most of the prices everywhere are in dollars, but because they only seem to have dollar notes and not any cents, they always give change less than a dollar in riel. Though obviously if you want to pay in riel or baht straight off then you can.
Angkor Wat is officially just the name of the main temple in the complex. We went in there first; however, our start was delayed by about half an hour because just as we reached the bridge to the temple, the heavens opened! It had been really hot and sunny as we'd cycled the 6 km from Siem Reap, but then clouds moved over quickly. I've seldom seen it rain so heavily. Having put on our waterproofs and locked up our bikes, after the rain subsided a bit we set off over the bridge to the temple. It's mainly ruins now, though with a Buddhist shrine in use within it. It was built in the first half of the 12th century, as the king's state (Hindu) temple dedicated to Vishnu. In the 14th or 15th century, however, it was converted to Theravada Buddhist use. A lot of the grounds surrounding it, within the outer walls, was under water or boggy; we were wearing the right footwear however (our hiking boots), and avoided the deep bits, so we could walk through most of it without water getting into our shoes. We saw fantastic carving everywhere, but of special note was the famous bas-relief friezes on the walls of the western, southern, eastern and northern galleries. Apart from one historical scene, they depict scenes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
After Angkor Wat, we cycled a couple of km further to Angkor Thom complex and the Bayon temple within it. This was built specifically as a Buddhist temple, about a century after Angkor Wat, and it also has carved bas-reliefs. What we liked best about it though were the faces carved into the towers of the upper terrace in the inner gallery. There are 3 or 4 really large ones, and around 200 smaller ones! The temple ruins were mostly open to the elements, but appeared to me to have an incredible amount of carving within it - even more than Angkor Wat. There was a small Buddhist shrine within the part most under shelter, and a man there gave us an incense stick each to light and put in front of it. After Bayon, we went to the Terrace of the Elephants, which is another part of Angkor Thom. It was attached to a palace which has mostly disappeared now, and was used for viewing public ceremonies. I walked around on top of the terrace ruins; the elephants mentioned are carved into its eastern face, but because the stretch of grass in front of it was really boggy, and the carving was a bit worn away, I couldn't get close enough to get a good photo.
Dave looked round some other ruins which were close by, while I looked after the bikes, and then it started getting dark so we went back to something we'd passed earlier and thought looked interesting. It was a big flight of very old stairs (leading up to another temple I think), but when we got there, we were told that it and all the other buildings were closing for the day, so we had to go home. It's surprising how when you're cycling you don't feel tired until you stop, and then the heat and sweat comes upon you all at once. It was slightly hair-raising cycling through the traffic-full roads of Siem Reap after dark, and Dave took us on a bit of a scenic route within the town, but we got home in the end.
For dinner we went to a Khmer restaurant. All the dishes came with rice, even the soups and the noodle dishes; I had one with vegetables, garlic and either beef or chicken, and Dave had a Khmer curry.