Hello, we are now in Cambodia after making the long journey down from Chiang Mai in the North of Thailand to Siem Reap. We had to catch a ten hour overnight bus to Bangkok, arriving at 3am for a quick breakfast of sweet bread and chocolate milk. We then had to catch a bus to the Thai Cambodian border, where we were both so tired that Max fell asleep with a piece of bread in his mouth!! The bus was uncomfortable and smelly with people being sick because of the bumpiness (note that this was still luxurious compared to some of the buses we have now encountered in Cambodia!) The border crossing was hassle free, except it took a very long time to actually cross the border, having to queue for 4 hours in the sun while the Thais were given priority and walked straight through. It was here we met Jake and Patrick, two gap year students from Bristol, volunteering in Cambodia for a few months. It was only their second day travelling so we took them under our ever knowledgable wing and crossed the border, dodging the scam of the 'Free bus' which takes tourists to an over priced taxi rank. However, one of the taxi drivers was insistant that we went with his 2000 baht (50 pounds) taxi, following us down the road, at times pretending to be a different person. When we eventually found a regular taxi for 25$, he continued following us trying to persuade the taxi driver not to take us. Thankfully, our taxi driver was awesome, chatting to us all the way to Siem Reap, 3 hours away. He stopped in his local village and took us all for lunch Cambodian style. Fried pork and rice served with cold tea for a dollar. He gave us lots of advice on Cambodia such as to drink in the beer gardens with the Cambodians as its cheaper, "Ask your tuk-tuk driver to take you there but dont let him drink, one can ok, two three can, no good". He also loved football, telling us about his favourite team the Tractor boys, which we all had to guess what an earth he was talking about. It turned out to be Ipswich (worked out by Hayley) and apparently he knows someone who plays for them. He laughed at his own jokes a lot and tried to tell us our guide books were wrong and there is no Malaria or landmines in Cambodia anymore. He suggested a hotel his brother and sister-in-law owned to stay at; however we were reluctant due to the amount of scams taxi drivers pull out. We expected to find a shabby hotel that was very over priced, but to our surprise it was an excellent hotel! It had large, clean rooms, hot water (which we don't even want anymore due to it regularly hitting 40 degrees!) and a free taxi into town! All for 6$ a night. We unpacked, chilled out with the cable TV and caught up on some well needed sleep. That night, we went out with our new mates for a cheap Khmer dinner and went into pub street. Pub street is a small road in the middle of Siem Reap lined with nothing but pubs and restaurants. The beer flowed thick and fast here at only 50 cents a glass! However, we only had a few beers and headed back ready to rise at 4:30AM the next day for a full day at the ancient Angkor City. We were woken up by Jake and Pat who were clearly excited and ready before we had even woken up! We managed to get dressed quickly, and scramble bleary eyed into the tuk-tuk. We arrived at Angkor Wat, the most famous of the Angkor temples, in time for sunsrise. Not before realising we'd forgotten to withdraw money and being told the nearest atm was a few kilometres away. Luckily we were sharing the trip with Pat and Jake who lent us the 10$ short we were for the entance fee (and they're supposed to be the rookies!). Angkor Wat was massive, its the biggest Hindu Temple in the world and the sunrise behind it looked really beautiful. We then tucked into a whopping 4 dollar breakfast! which consisted of a baguette with dairylea cheese, some salad and a hot chocolate. Pat and Jake were less than impressed, but for us despite being hideously overpriced it was far from being one of the worst breakfasts we had. We explored inside Angkor Wat and some of the small surrounding temples. Entering any temple was a challenge due to the steps leading into them being 2 foot apart and crumbling away. On the way into the city of Angkor Thom we found another temple hidden away which had a massive set of steps that we all pretty much crawled up, to find a scary bald lady sitting alone at the top with a bag of rice, mumbling in Khmer. She stayed a little then left-how she managed to climb up and down the stairs is a mystery. We got dropped at the next temple complex which was Angkor Thom, a small city in its self with a market and many small temples. Here, we lost the boys and explored ourselves. We sat and rested for a while and continued to explore the labryinthe of tunnels and rooms all built thousands of years ago. It was an incredible experience to be dwarfed by such enormous temples and to have the freedom to explore them ourselves. They were so beautifully built conidering how old they were. We then went back to our taxi driver and waited for the others. A Thai lady would not leave us alone here and thought we wanted food and we had to politely reject her many times. We searched for the boys and continued to be hassled by the same lady who really did want us to eat with her and assumed we was waiting for our friends first. The look of dissapointment on her face was awful when we found our friends but had to drive away. We left Pat and Jake where we met them while we took our taxi back to an ATM to grab some money as we were beginning to suffer in the heat with a small amount of water. When we returned we all continued on to more temples. After a while we was getting very exhausted from being up and exploring since 5AM. Eventually a lot of the temples begin to look the same and it gets very tiring. The two temples which we enjoyed the most were Bayon and the Tree temple (Ta Prohm). Bayon was a massive temple complex with many faces carved into it, which looks very impressive from a distance. We also particularly liked a small wind tunnel we found. Ta Prohm or the tree temple was where Lara Croft's Tomb Raider was filmed. The temple had massive trees that had begun to grow into and were twisted into the stonework. Although lots of parts had begun to fall down and did not look safe!! Overall, the temples were very impressive and Angkor was massive, you could spend weeks exploring it. The only thing that ruined it were largeChinese and Japanese tour groups and some parts of the temples were being rebuilt with shiny new cement, ruining the authenticity. By time we got back to our hotel we were all in desperate need of a shower and a lay down. I think we all fell asleep as soon as we hit the bed, waking up sometime later for dinner. We tried Lok Lak, a famous Cambodian dish of marinated stir fried beef served with a lemon and pepper dip. Cambodian food is often said to be not as good as its neighbours Thailand and Vietnam but Lok Lak is delicous!! We went out for a few beers but we were all knackered so we said our farewells to Pat and Jake who were leaving for Phnom Penh the next day on the way to their volunteering project, and headed back. The next day we had a much needed lie in and headed for the market in the late afternoon where we looked around all the handicrafts and clothes before heading for a dinner of fried frogs and fish! We planned to head for Kampong Cham the next day but when we got to the bus office all the buses were full as it was the start of New Year so we were forced to stay in Siem Reap an extra day. We didnt want to go back to the same hotel as we had insisted to them that we already had tickets so we tried to find somewhere to stay close to the bus office. Unfortunately as this was in the centre of town a lot of accomodation was either full or too expensive. Eventually we found a "dorm room" for 3$ each. This "dorm room" turned out to be 3 beds in a corridor, and I mean literally in the corridor, no doors and people just walking through. Defintely the wierdest place we have ever stayed. However, staying in Siem Reap was worth it as we discovered two delights the French left behind in Cambodia - baguettes and ice coffee. The baguettes are delicous, varying meats, from a barbequed beef kebab to minced pork to a strange orange sausage, with a sweet sauce and some sort of pickled salad. We have been eating them for breakfast and lunch ever since. The ice coffee is just normal coffee poured over ice and condensed milk and in the heat of Cambodia they go down a treat. We also got to see the first night of Khmer new year. We headed to pub street after dinner and met some Manchester people to drink with. We told tales of our adventures and drank a lot of cheap beer until they headed for bed. We stayed out and saw in the new year with a bang! The two large bars opposite each other both threw parties which sprawled on to the street with a giant skipping rope, tug of war, conga lines, barn dancing and the impossible Cambodian Macarena. We danced with everyone all night before finding our hallway and crashing for a few hours before we had to be up and out to head to Kampong Cham. Kampong Cham is the gateway to Cambodia's wild east where we began our journey along the Mekong and into the jungle, which will update you on soon!! Wish us luck as we venture into the unknown...