In and around Siem Reap

For the past 3 days we have visited some of the temples at Angkor. A pretty expensive affair really, at $40 each for a 3 day pass. Thankfully they were really great to explore; I won't drone on about it, we have just put a few pictures in the photo albums so you get the idea. What we had to keep reminding ourselves was just how old these buildings are, then you realise how amazing they are.

The cafés around the sites are onto a good number; whenever we stopped at a temple at least 2 but usually 4 or 5 café proprietors would shout, ' Hey lady, sir - you wan foo' drin'?' They all offered similar bland-ish fare and would charge $3 for some vegetable fried rice. $3!!!!!!! Now we realise and are quite happy with the fact that as tourists we will be charged a bit more for things than locals but bearing in mind that this price is at least 9 or10 times more than a local would be charged it's a bit ridiculous. Although when one lady started to say, 'I give you discount lady - wha' you pay?' we just paid the money as we wanted to leave before sunset. So for 2 simple meals and some water we paid $7; we paid our tuk-tuk driver $10 for the whole day for carting us around. There's no logic.

Child vendors are rife and again they had a well practised sales pitch; this time when trying to sell us a pack of 10 or 20 postcards they would then insist on counting to 10 or 20 in 5 different languages. We actually refrained from buying from children, rightly or wrongly, it's difficult to know what to do for the best.

On the subject of children, we realised that whilst in Vietnam and Cambodia we cannot recall hearing a tantrum from a native toddler. Could just be coincidence but the young children here seem, and I could be completely wrong on this, to be more hardened to life. You see these 3 and 4 year old souls on the front of a motorbike gripping on with their small hands, with a calm determined look on their faces, squinting slightly as the wind and dust swirls past. Eating habits are obviously very different too; passing a school, a vendor selling what looked like chilli snails or clams was doing great business before the start of the school day - on my way to work children eating cheesy Doritos and drinking blue fizzy pop was more commonplace.

We visited the old market as I wanted to buy my baby brother (he'll love me calling him that) a Cambodian football t-shirt and me a Cambodian silk scarf. I think Matt is mastering the art of haggling but it's really beginning to bug me that it can take like 40 minutes to buy something. And everything is 'velly good qual-tey.' The silk is beautiful and I had already bought 2 scarves in Phnom Penh for $9.50 so when the lady said $15 for one Matt started the patter; she tried to sell us a cheaper scarf that was 'velly good qual-tey' so we asked if that was very good quality what was the $15 one to which she replied 'this more best qual-tey sir, lady.' Anyway Matt started to tell her she should change supplier as we got scarves in Phnom Penh for much cheaper; eventually we managed to knock her down and got 2 for $12. If you bought these in the UK they would cost probably around $40 I'm guessing but I think she was still doing well out of us. Only thing is, I think I've worn a scarf as a wrap twice in my entire life so I haven't got a clue what I'm going to do with 4 of them. Still, they're pretty colours, should look good in the wardrobe.