Day 69

Bangkok-Siem Reap

Early morning get up to begin our journey to Cambodia. The mini bus to the border only took about 4 hours including stop-offs which was good, however it took us about 2 ½ hours to actually cross the Cambodian border. The guy helping us cross told us to take money out in Thailand and swap it as better exchange rate, this however was a scam, he got commission from the exchange place he took us too!! We saw this coming; i think we're getting good with the old scams now!
The guy also kept on at us to get a taxi to our guesthouse as it would be quicker, this was at a price though. We stuck to our guns and got the bus which wasn't too bad of a journey. It stopped 8km outside of the town though, everyone was really angry. We got a Tuk- Tuk to our guesthouse, which is really nice. At the moment Cambodia reminds me of India. We went for a walk along the river and into town, had a really nice Khmer curry, and really cheap draft… 30p!!! This was good as the malaria tablets made me sick, not so nice!

Day 70

We got up reasonably late; Rog did his press-ups-lol whilst I read my book!! We had breakfast at our guesthouse, and the owner gave us his copy of the Angkor Temples. Went for a walk into town, I bought some bracelets and Rog got a new vest. The people here seem really nice and it's a really nice laid back town, very French looking. A lady in the market put a head scarf on Rog as he keeps complaining his scalp is burning, it actually looked alright. Went to a bar and had a cheap beer, whilst watching all the Cambodians walk past trying to sell books etc. One guy has a trick where he jumps through a ring of fire, which has knives all around the ring! He jumps through and lands on a mattress, we saw him do this about 20 times in the space of an hour. The others guys who walk along the street, many of whom are children, quite sadly have half legs missing or other deformed extremities; this is quite sad to see. We bought a Cambodia book off one of the men.
We then went to another bar, and the guy sat next to us looked exactly like Rogers brother Andy. Rog clearly didn't believe me when I first said it, but when he saw Andy 2nd it was amazing!!
We got back to our guesthouse in the evening and managed to speak to Rog's family on Skype, this was really good, very nice to see you all! Andy however kept showing us stuff on the web cam that we are missing; his cup of tea looked delicious!

Day 71

Picked up our bicycles from Nini (the owner of our guesthouse), both of the tyres on both bikes were flat. Nini borrowed the bike pump and pumped them up and we were on our way to the Angkor temples. After cycling for 20 mins we reached the ticket gate and paid our $40 for the three day passes to the temples. The bike ride was really good fun, it is so nice to cycle around Cambodia as it is absolutely beautiful. The children kept whizzing passed us on their bikes, Rog and I were shattered.
We went straight to Angkor Wat, the biggest of all the temples. This was so amazing and very impressive. A big part of it is currently under restoration, this however didn't diminish it's magnificence. We were here midday so it was nice and quiet walking around, and also meant we could take lots of pictures without people in the way! Next was Angkor Thom; the main city with numerous temples inside. Our first temple being Bayon, and was Rog's favourite. This was due to the fact that it's like a maze, and very easy to get lost. It's a massive Temple made up of extremely big carved faces in the stone. We also managed to loose each other inside; I was just waiting for Rog to jump out on me!
We cycled towards our next destination, this being The Elephant terrace (a massive terrace with elephants carved into the stone. Unfortunately the Wat behind it was closed due to restoration. Walking around we got talking to a little boy, who was so sweet I wanted to take him home with us. He was playing a recorder made out of Bamboo, he was very good at it.
Felling tired we cycled home back through the rural area surrounding Angkor. This was extremely long, especially on rusty old bikes however nice the surroundings.
We relaxed back at our guesthouse for the evening. A really good day.
Day 72

As I didn't feel very well today, we decided to spend the day in Siem Reap town downloading our photos at a wifi restaurant/bar. Emma got a little tipsy on $0.50 beers, whilst I had lemonade. When walking back to the guesthouse, the roads were closed off to make way to the president but unfortunately we waited on the wrong side of the road to wave hello back to his royalesk wave.

Day 73

To catch the sunrise we got up early and cycled to our first place of the day Ta Prohm, which is where they filmed a part of Tomb Raider, unfortunately Lara Croft wasn't to be seen. It was amazing to see all the trees growing over the old temple walls and buildings, certainly not disappointing any way. Next was Ta Keo, a three pyramid type structure with some seriously seriously steep staircases as the entrance, this was not a place if you vertigo - Emma bottled the top! Outside Ta Keo I had a 'Pad sei yue' from one of the stools that I was later to regret because of the suspicious looking fried egg on top. Having cycled 28k and with 8k still more to go, my beat up, buckled, flat tyre bike, finally gave in with a puncture. Luckily there are Tuk tuk's everywhere and we able to dump our bikes on the front of one and get a lift back to our guesthouse, this resulted in our short journey back looking like we had got lazy and couldn't be bothered to cycle anymore. Despite some comforting Western food, the evening was spent in the guesthouse not feeling too good!!!

Day 74

Having shattered ourselves from all the cycling over the past few days we decided to do the sensible thing and hire a tuk tuk for a few hours to see the last remaining temples we had yet to see - Elephant and Lepar King Terraces, Preah Khan (better than Ta Prohm) and Ta Som. On the way back, I failed at my attempts to get a photo of a monk on the back of motorcycle… would have looked cool. In the evening we booked our tickets to Phnom Penh.

After 6 days in Siem Reap and 3 days around Angkor, we were all templed out but we saw some amazing sights and was great to finally see it for real.