Hello people....welcome to our SECOND BLOG of th day....check how efficient we've become....so make sure you check out our first one from thailand before you read on...

So....we left you guys on our journey to the cambodian border....we started out at 6.30am to get our taxi for the bus station...arrived there to see a world of chaos...even at bl**dy 6.45!!! There were touts trying to usher us every which way...regardless of where we actually wanted to go! But we managed to steam past them and inside the main building and thanks to a bit of research (www.tailsofasia.com for anyone planning on ever coming here!) we found the correct ticket booth in no time! When we actually came to boarding teh bus we were slightly concerned that there was no more room for about 6 peoples luggage...so it had to go at the back of the bus...next to our seats...which was rather cosy! Cosy is definitely the best way to describe that bus seeing as at the fisrt stop about 20 people got on...baring in mind the bus was already full when it left BK!! So they all stood in the aisle...for the remaining 3-4 hours!!!

Anyway...the bus made it to the Arayanprathet which was the town closest to the border. The next bit to the border had to be done on tuk tuk. We had heard of the scam whereby the tuk tuk driver takes you to some bogus consulate saying that we need to pay over teh odds for a visa before taking you to the border...so we were hoping our driver wouldn't be one of these...we were wrong...we saw the sign for the consulate office and saw that he was slowing down...immediately we just shouted to him...BORDER BORDER...and he kinda got the drift and carried on!!

Once we got to the border we had guys pulling us left right and centre trying to sell us a visa...but we went straight to the border exit and got the hell out of thailand!! Once in the "no mans land" we acually had to get our visa...so once we got to the visa office with our passports, photo and the $20 its supposed to cost you...the office looked at it and said to me "this is not enough"..."you pay $20 in thailand and wait 3 days...give me more"...i stood my ground and refused to pay a cent over $20 so he said we'd probably have to wait ages then! 3 minutes later...our passports were thrown out of the window and we were done!

The rest was quite smooth cause our hostel had arranged for someone to get us a shuttle to the taxi office and then then taxi to our hostel! So all in all...we got through without any hitches...but a memorable experience!

The journey from the border to Siem Reap was a real eye opener...itwas some serious poverty we were driving past. shacks the size of one room just on the road side...with all these dirty little kids playing contently in the dirt!! We arrived at our hostel in Siem Reap at about 5pm which wasn't too bad! We got showered up and headed straight out for a little tour. At the hostel we met on of their resident tuk tuk drivers who offered to take us around town and also said he'd take us to all the temples in the area! We were a bit dubious to begin with cause so many people had tried to scam us in the past day!

But he turned out to be really genuine and sound and took us around 10 different temples over the past three days. The Temples were spectacular! There were all so different with their own character...Angkor Wat is the most famous and the largest religious temple in the world (or so nicky tells me!!) and it was so spectacular in its surroundings...everytime we drove past it we were in awe! Another temple which I really was impressed with was Ta Prohm which has just been abandoned to just let nature grow around and within it...so there were HUGE tree growing around and through the rock!! If anyone has seen the film tomb raider (dad!) that was filmed there and it looked exactly how it shows it in the film...it was amazing!!

Our giude "Mr Seila" also took us to a killing ground where there is a memorial with thousands of skulls and bones on display as a constant reminder of the terrible days of the Pol Pot regime of the late 70's...that was a pretty humbling experience...especially cause he told us how his own family lived through and how his dad was actually orphaned by this regime! Just hearing his own story really makes you appreciate how spoilt we really are...this dude didn't even know his own birthday...he only knew that he was born in 1984 sometime!!

Its been so humbling (and quite moving!) over the past few days here just to see the level of poverty in the area. Although this region is quite touristy, its still regarded as one of the poorest regions in the world. Every temple we went to we had hords of children (as young as 3) trying to sell us everything and anything...from bangles to scarves to water! You just can't buy everything and you just don't know who the money is really going to! One evening we were approached by a little boy holding a baby and begged us to buy his brother some milk powder...I was sceptical but nicky was sold immediately! So we went and bought it and gave it to him cause we thought "what else could he do with milk powder?"! But later in the hostel we found out how they make you buy these things only to get a FULL REFUND and take the cash...apparently its quite a lucrative business!! haha! Little bu**ers!!

So tomorrow we head down to Phnom Pehn which is the capital! We're heading out the following day though to go to the north east...to Ratankiri region to hopefully check out come spectacular cambodian countryside!!

We'll catch up with you guys soon and we'll put some pics on as soon as we find our memory card reader (which nicky has misplaced :-))) ) cheeky no i haven't!!!!

Ok gotta go...this internet is costing us a whopping 75cents an hour!! :-))

Take care all....J n N xxxx