The bus journey from Phnom Penh was uneventful, so will move on to our first proper day in Siem Reap. (Our first impressions were positive, we loved the place. Lots of cheap eats, trendy places and best of all lots of markets!)

Our first day started at 5am by getting a tuktuk to Angkor Wat for sunrise (Angkor Wat is undoubtedly the heart and soul of Cambodia), As we waited in pitch black by the lake waiting for then sun to rise behind Angkor Wat we could not help but feel that the whole event was anti climatic. It did not help that there was lots of green scaffolding to conserve the temple....wasn't the prettiest of sights, having said that Angkor Wat still pulls off majestic grace other temples cannot.

Angkor Wat is the worlds largest religious structure, after wandering around we moved on to the fortified city of Angkor Thom 10 sq km in size (at one time the city boasted a population of 1 m when London only had 50,000)....and now no one lives in Angkor Thom while....London is now overcrowded!

We then went to visit the Bayon which is Helen's favourite - it shows off the inflated ego of the then king. There are loads of faces looking down at you from above and the temple exudes power....

The day continued with visiting a few other temples, they all were powerful, awe inspiring. Ta Prohm (in Tomb Raider!) was amazing because you can see how the roots have taken over the temples - it shows the power of the jungle, basically Indiana jones would feel at home here.

As we did a lot of walking yesterday, the second day was spent chilling out, after some discussion we agreed to a change of plans. Our entire trip has changed for several reasons and therefore we had to do a lot of research, budgeting etc.

Due to the stress, we both went for a foot scrub and to get our ears candle waxed - it was totally different to what we expected as we thought the wax would melt into our ears but no, our ear wax gets sucked into the tube and when we were finished we were disgusted to see how much wax came out. Hopefully we shouldn't have any problems equalising when doing our dive master course. The rest of the evening was spent in the pub.

We hired a tuktuk driver again on the third day and our first destination was Banteay Srei, which is apparently the jewel in Angkorian art. It is also one of the few temples not to be commissioned by a king. We loved this temple as it was so raw, untouched and not a lot of conservation work has been done.

We stopped by at the Landmine museum which is operated by a formed Khmer Rouge soldier, Aki Ra who later defected to the Vietnamese army. Aki Ra spent his childhood laying mines and now spends the rest of his life clearing them. From seeing his work we can see that he holds a lot of remorse against his childhood and the Khmer Rouge. He is now a foster father of about 32 children who have either been orphaned or are Landmine victims.

The next stop of the day was Preah Khan, one of the largest temples and we didn't finish as it was massive and took forever to navigate around the maze....We gave up half way which indicated that we were all 'templed out'.

We had a quick return back to Angkor on the way back to Siem Reap for morphsuit time. (Don't worry Fergus, you WILL get your photo!)

The evening was spent chatting to some Deaf Australians, eating good food and browsing the markets. Helen had a manicure and pedicure (safe to say it was better than the one she had in Phuket). After buying our usual souvenirs (sp) we headed to bed as we had to catch early bus back to Bangkok, our final stop before heading to Bali/Gili Trawangan for TWO whole months!