Dear Diary,

Arrived in Siam Reap & it was unlike any of the other places I have been to when just arriving. THinbgs actually seemed to have an order to them!! No touts asking if you want a taxi or a hotel etc - a very pleasant change.

Organised a moped driver to take me around the temples as I only had 2 days there, but was a bit shocked when he said we had to leave at 5am in order to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat!!

The morning was actually quite an adventure in itself. Most of the roads leading up to the area of Angkor are not lit, so there are hundreds & hundreds of tuc tuc'c, mopeds, cars, mini buses etc all trabelling in the pitch balck to see the sunrise. When we arrived at the site there were alot of sensible people who had brought torches with them, you wont be surprised to hear that I wasn't one of them, but it actually added to the whole experience - it was a bit like going to a rave in the middle of nowhere!!

It was a bit of a cloudy morning, so the sunrise was not as spectacular as I had of hoped, but I think some of the pictures are ok. I would say to anyone who might be thinking of going to see the temples that Angkor Wat, despite the biggest in name terms is not a great place to see the sunrise as you are not in an elevated postion. Sunset would be a much better time to go to this particular temple.

Over the 2 days I visited 9 temles in all. All of them having their own appeal. My Favourite was Bayon.

The carvings within the stone temples were amazing considering some of these temples were built circa 900 years ago!!

I have to say that I did suffer from camara fatigue by the end of it as the pictures were all starting to look very similar, so I have added just a selection of them.

Of course I found a really good bar for the evening activities & spent most of the time playing pool (for some reason I was in very good form) in between the G&T's!!

Siam Reap is a very different place to anything within Vietnam & I am a bit dissappointed that I didn't get to spend more time here, although it did not hold the same feeling I had for Vietnam, even after just 2 days!!

I have a hell of a journey ahead fo me - leave Cambodia at 1.30pm on 20th & arrice in Auckland at 3.30pm on the 21st!!! Am not looking forward to that at all!!