Siem Reap Day One;

The bus journey from Battambang to Siem Reap was not as bad as we thought it might be, and took less than four hours even with a twenty minute pitt stop. We had a shuttle bus first which took us to the bus station (tin shack in a dusty car park) where we waited around 20 minutes before being loaded onto another full bus! Arriving in Siem reap, our hotel was little further out from the centre than we had hoped so we shared a tuk tuk with another girl we had met on the bus to get to the guesthouse (another wild goose chase as no one seems to know where anything is haha) but we arrived and haggled our tuk tuk driver down to $10 to take us around the Angkor Temples the next day.

After chilling (sweating) in the room fixing up the blog for a few hours we headed out to the Old Market area of town, looked around the market and made a few purchases (tourist tat) Haggling is definitely the way forward usually paying less than half the original price quoted!
We then found ourselves on Pub Street! Full of so many restaurants, tuktuks, street smoothies, cocktails for a dollar, 50 cent beers. Most definitely the place to be. We found a lovely restaurant, The Khmer Kitchen and ate some beautiful local curries with a 4 dollar jug of the local beer, Angkor. We were both pretty ready to head on back to the hotel to attempt to stop sweating and rest the weary limbs!

Siem Reap Day Two;

Pretty decent sleep at the Les Parigots hotel, it is on the main highway 6 good little place to stop with only a fifteen minute walk to the main strip, and only $10USD a night, nice family run business with helpful and friendly staff. At 9am our tuktuk driver had already arrived and took us straight down to temple territory, asked him to stop somewhere for breakfast first before we then headed straight to Angkor Wat, it truly was beautiful! As other reports say there are a LOT of tourists but this is expected, we both found it much nicer when we arrived at Angkor Thom, as this area was much more vast so less people to contend with for photos and just peace and quiet! It truly was a spectacular place to be. Our tuktuk driver took us around and pointed to the different areas on the map and seemed pretty genuine so we booked him for tomorrow too. We decided not to cram too much into one day due to us having a three day pass, and as it was the peak time of the day it was ridiculously hot so we decided to head back to the hotel for a cool down and relax as we're heading out at 4:30am tomorrow for the temple sunrise.

Siem Reap Day Three;

Woke up bright and cheery haha, our tuktuk driver was already waiting for us, so at 4:30am we tuktukked our way through Siem reap (the city that never seems to sleep) and arrived at the gates for Angkor Wat in the pitch black. We wondered up and through the first gate, seeing very few tourists but knew that this wouldn't last by first light there was already a large amount gathering for what was a beautiful sunrise over the pillars of Angkor Wat. As soon as the sun fully arrived there were many children and adults out and about trying to sell their bits and pieces, the one we did take an offer from was a young boy very well spoken With a hearty looking menu so we followed him to Ana table 3 for brekkie, unfortunately this was the most fly ridden place we've eaten yet, and the longest we'd waited for food haha and also were asked to buy postcards from puppy dog trained eyed children at least 10 times, so breakfast was not all that great haha. But soon we were back on the tuktuk and headed to Ta Prohm, (the setting for much of the Tomb Raider movie), it was a beautiful temple as were the other smaller sites we visited that day. We also had some interactions with monkeys and a greeting from our first elephants, so all in all a pretty good morning. We knew the day was going to be very long as we were without a hotel room now and our bus was not until 11:30pm but hey we decided to just try and fill the day. After the tuktuk dropped us back at the hotel, we were able to use the shower in the hotel which was a godsend, we then relaxed in the hotel lobby for a while before heading back to the Khmer Kitchen on Pub Street for a feast once again, we had the best spring rolls ever and beautiful curries. We then decided to have a treatment at one of the spas Katie opted for a foot massage (very hard but feet and legs felt amazing) Andrew went in for the fish pedicure haha (although he described them as sharks) We then grabbed a cocktail before heading to the cinema. Siem Reap cinema is an awesome experience they don't have new releases as such but you select a movie from a large folder and book a time, then you get your own private room with film projected and massive leather seats, and your drinks and popcorn delivered to your room! Amazing! And luckily we both agreed on Inbetweeners 2 as we'd not yet seen and it was definitely a good choice!