According to Lonely Planet (our trusty guidebook) "Siem Reap is the gateway to Cambodia's spiritual and cultural heartbeat, the temples of Angkor" and this is exactly the reason we came to Cambodia. The temples of Angkor were the capital of Cambodia during the ancient Khmer empire which ruled our most of present day Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

We arrived into Siem Reap, got a nice and cheap guesthouse and booked our tuk tuk for our 3 days around the temples. An early rise the next morning and we arrived to catch our first glimpse of the world's largest religious building - Angkor Wat - just as the sun rose behind it. Now, being that this was at 5am, we were still kinda half asleep and it took a while to really realise what a magnificent sight this really was, that is once you ignored the hundreds of other tourists who had come to see the sunrise as well. Angkor Wat is huge, it's only when you enter through the gates of the outer wall and down the terrace to the main building that the sheer scale of the building hits you. After sunrise we spent 2 hours getting lost inside the stone corridors marvelling at the beautifully details markings and sculptures that jump at you from the walls. Angkor Wat is the best preserved of all the temples in the Angkor region and it really was a magical experience.

Next stop wall Angkor Thom with the highlight being Bayon, a temple of corridors, steep staircases and a collection of 216 enormous smiling faces staring back at you from the towers. These huge heads glare at you from every angle and when you finally get a part of the temple to yourself, away from the masses of Japanese tour groups, it's a really strange feeling. We just sat there, talking to a very strange French lady who it seems returns to Angkor every few years to paint, admiring these faces; i could have sat there for hours. Onward we went visiting Phimeanakas, Preah Palilay, Tep Pranam, the Terrace of the Leper King (with it's naked Buddah, a first in our travels) and the Terrace of Elephants. After a very quick lunch, amid all the child hawkers selling t-shirts, scarfs, postcards, etc, we left Angkor Thom and visited Ta Keo and onto Ta Prohm.

Ta Prohm is very different from most of the other temples in Angkor in that it has been left unrestored, nature having reclaimed this temples over hundreds of years. The jungle seems to have swallowed this temple and the effect is huge trees and roots growing up, around and through these huge stone walls, very atmospheric and a welcome relief from the blazing sun. Many photos later we were back into our tuk-tuk heading for a unset view, the day having flown by, atop a hill overlooking Angkor Wat at Phnom Bakheng. Just as my ever so trustworthy brother had advised us, we were joined by hundreds of other tourists and tour groups and feeling rather tired - we'd been running around the temples for 12 hours at this stage - and surrounded by happy, shouting tour groups we called it a day before the sun actually set (it was pretty crap anyway) and heading back to our guesthouse.

Another early rise and back again at Angkor Wat for sunrise, this time at a different spot and earlier that the day before. Learning from the first days experience, we left early and back to Bayon to catch the smiling faces in the early morning sun, even more magical given that there were only 3 other people there. From there we continued onto Preah Khan and Preah Neak Pean, east to Ta Som and then south to Eastern Mabon. Then we left the Angkor Temples and north to Banteay Srei stopping off at the Landmine Museum. Reading the stories in the museum about kids still losing limbs while working on their farm, the landmines being remnants of the past wars which only ended in the late 80's, was quite horrific; it's at places like these that you really do realise how lucky were are. We finished the day early and got back to the guesthouse around 4pm for a well deserved rest.

A little sleep in the next day, 9am we were off to the Roluos Group, the capital before Angkor dating back to AD 850. While the temples weren't quite as impressive at the temples we had seen the past 2 days, it was still a well worth visit and i'm glad we did it. That afternoon we spent in the maze of markets in Siem Reap before getting out tuk tuk to Phnom Krom for sunset. Our tuk tuk driver has recommended this to us for the sunset view, promising us that it would be quiet. He wasn't wrong and atop this ancient hilltop temple we witnessed what was probably the best sunset we've yet seen on our travels, truely brilliant. Back to town for a few drinks and another early rise to get our bus the next morning to Bangkok.

Our bus journey was to take us 12 hours and along the worst road we have ever had the fortune to travel along. It's a widely know rumour that an unnamed national airline company in Cambodia pays the government considerable monies not to upgrade the road from the Thai border to Siem Reap so that the majority of touriste choose to fly rather that spend 6 hours on a bumpy road. The result of this bribe is a truly rough 6 hour ride to the border. However, as we were the last people crushed into our tiny overcrowded bus, we were put up front with the driver which ended up being the best seats on the bus, we even managed to sleep part of the way. I quiet enjoyed it in a strange way but then it was back to the norm once we entered Thailand and changed to our normal double decker tourist bus. Four hours later we arrived into Bangkok and the madness that is the Khao San Road, for our 2 night stay before we fly out to Hong Kong. We can't believe our South East Asian journey is drawing to a close, i want to spend another 3 months here....