Hi Everyone,

After a full day of intense heat and humidity, it has finally started to rain, and wow is it impressive. Very very loud!

Last night, before dinner we ventured to the night market. We had a good look around and managed to refrain from buying anything...a first :) We then went to Pub Street and went for dinner at a restaurant that is recommended in the Lonely Planet- Temple Club. Emma and I had amazing Khmer Amok (curry dish) yuuuuum! Also went for a pitcher of beer, but was Anchor not Angkor (which we had in Phnom Pehn, very good!!) however this one was not as great. -most of you may know that I dont like beer, but for some reason I like the beer here :D

Oh also, funny little episode- when we were on our way to the night market, a very cheeky & naked 3 year old boy glared at us whilst we walked past, even pointed an accusatory finger at Emma. When Emma and Emily had walked past him, he sprinted after them and gave Emily a big smack on the bum, which he found hilarious! Like I said very cheeky!

We were really boring and headed back to the guest house for an early night, passing out at 10:30. However we all woke up at 12:30 extremely uncomfortable as the room was about 500 degrees. We got over that though and were abruptly woken up at 415.

We hopped onto the tuk tuk (organised by our guest house) and made the journey in the dark and cool breeze towards Angkor. When we arrived at the ticket booth, we realised we only had enough to pay for our entry and then ha 2 dollars for the rest of the day. We also realised we had forgotten our water back in our room...oops!

Our tuk tuk driver, who didnt really speak any English, and who we have nicknamed "Tuk" dropped us off infront of Angkor Wat. We followed a groups of people in the dark through the entrance gateway and along the long walkway that leaded up to Angkor Wat. With it being dark and us still somewhat sleepy, it made the walk quite entertaining, esp when we managed to walk right into deep puddles! Unfortunately there was plenty of cloud in the sky, so sunrise was not as spectacular as expected. But the temple itself is still extremely impressive, so was still a great view! We set off a bit before the masses and spent about an hour wandering around the temple. There was some maintenance work going on, so we were restricted to some areas.

We then headed to the village Angkor Thom, where the first temple we visited was Bayon. This is a temple with plenty of Buddhist faces and about 52 towers. The layout is a little bit hectic so was difficult to get around the grounds. After we moved onto Baphuon, but could not see much of it as it was under serious maintenance (since 1908) as the temple was built on a sandbank and keeps collapsing each time they try to renovated it. From Baphuon we had access to the rear of the Royal Palace area and climbed up the steep steps of Phimeanakas. This was the resident chapel of the King and Queen. At the entrance of the royal palace area was the elephant terrance and Terrace of the Leper King. By this time it was 8:00 and extremely hot and dehydrated, so we made a b-line for the market stalls and managed to buy three bottles of water with the little money we had. As we were leaving a little girl came up to us asking if we wanted to buy her bracelets. She asked where we were from and said that if she guessed the capital of Switzerland we had to buy a bracelet! We explained to her we had no money, which she replied Ï don't believe you"" and that no one comes to Cambodia with out any money." We explained the situation of forgetting the money, but she still didnt believe us. It rather amusing chatting with this clever girl, even though we were telling the truth.

Tuk was then ready and waiting for us on the road and took us to the Victory gates. We had a quick look around, before being confronted with another pushy young boy trying to sell us everything in his basket. He managed to corner Emily off and tried to tempt her with a pretty song off a flute. This did not work as we had NO money!

We moved onto Ta Keo, which is a really tall pyramid temple. It was never finished as it was hit by lightening. The steps were really impressive, it was pretty much like rock climbing. Once we reached the top, we all somewhat regretted the ascent as this meant an extremely steep descent! In flipflops as well! You will see what I mean when we get Emma's pictures up. This took about 45 minutes all together.

After we moved onto Ta Prohm which is the temple that has all the huge trees growing in, around, out of the temple buidlings. It is also the site where Tomb Raider was filmed. This was one of my favourites as the trees incorporated with the structures were just so impressive. However, there were also loads of people so we were all getting in the way of each other!

Finally we moved onto Banteay Kdei, which is a long row of doorways, with side chambers. By this time we were pretty exhausted so we had a quick look around, took a few pictures, then walked across to view the Sras Srang which is the royal bathing pool. All of this took about 6 hours and even though it was 11 we were all ready to go back to the guest house, have a shower and have a nap. I can't really imagine what it would have been like had we only started at 10 and viewed the sunset, as we had practially all sweated through our clothes by 8 in the morning.

Each temple beautiful and absolutely amazing to visit, but one thing I would recommend is to go with an English speaking guide. We thought Tuk might share some light onto the history of the temples, but he didnt speak English and didn-t seem to know the areas that well. When we got back to the guest house, we looked up some of the explanations in our Rough Guide, and realised we should have taken this with us as there were some recommendations as to what we should have looked out for! Oh well, we have amazing pictures and this can be advise for next time :)

Our nap lasted a little longer then expected and we woke up at 14:45. We headed out for lunch, having western food along pub street - we decided that our systems needed a little break. We then settled down at a really nice restaurant for a milkshake and ice coffee for Emma. We sat there for about 2 hours enjoying the ceiling fans! After we decided to try out the foot, back, neck and head massaged ($4 dollars each) for 1 hour. Emma and I sat together and experienced a rather painful foot and leg massage. We are sure to have blue shins tomorrow. Its really impressive how strong these tiny Cambodian ladies are! Emily was taken into another room and apparently her lady tested how flexible should could be!

Now that the rain has finally stopped we will head out for dinner, probably to the Red Piano restaurant where we had our afternoon drinks.

Our next destination is Singapore for 3 days. Our flight is at 745 tomorrow, so another early wake up for us! Very much looking forward to doing the big city tourism and seeing Daneil, Lindsey and Stew!

Hopefully we will be able to keep up with our updates and also be able to upload some pictures! Keep you posted :)

Jessica