After the fondest farewell from the owners of the Battambang homestay, a random bus journey in which I swore we were headed for Thailand and not Siem Reap, I arrived in Siem Reap. First encounters were Tuk Tuk drivers at the bus station telling me my hostel was too expensive and then full up even though I had booked online and reserved a bed! Siem Reap seems to be a little bit dirty but not as bad as perhaps Phnom Penh or Bangkok.

I just wanted to sleep when I arrived in my room but got showered and went out on the town. I ended up in a little restaurant in which I had a Cambodian BBQ. The lady literally cooked my dinner at the table and after a while I was sufficiently stuffed full! Somehow I ended up dancing the night away in the Temple bar with some random Australians who kept buying me Sambuca (which I hate!). Saturday ended up being a bit of a random nothing day in which I basically just called home and did nothing else apart from end up in another bar and getting home at 1 am yet again!

Today however was different, I woke to discover that the Hostel had booked out my bed to someone else and I needed to move rooms if I was going to stay any longer. A bit annoyed at reception I bumped into Marion (one of the French girls from the Battambang cooking class) who asked me what was wrong and then asked if I would like to come on a tour of the Temples with her and an Australian guy called Bas. I said yes as I had been here for a couple days and was really struggling to get motivated to get out there and see things again.

The 3 of us set off rather late to sufficiently cover the main Temples but it was alright, after getting our passes at the Angkor Temples office (my picture looks like a mug shot yet again) we were headed off to Angkor Wat. First impressions...I thought it would have more of a wow factor. Like people say the Taj Mahal is breath-taking when you see it but I guess this could have had something to do with the green tarp and construction scaffolding everywhere due to restoration which may have taken the edge off! We managed to spend 3 hours walking round Angkor Wat before being whisked off to Angkor Thom to see The Bayon. More famously known as 'The faces'.

I liked The Bayon, I thought it had great potential for beautiful serious pictures and at the same time some slapstick shots, for example Bas pointing to a face and because he was so tall it looked like he was picking it's nose! I almost posed like Usain Bolt in one of the windows but it would have required Marion to do the same the other side *sigh*.

Angkor Thom is massive, we also saw the Terrace of Elephants and The Bhuphanon (excuse my spelling!) before settling on lunch at about 4 pm. I was determined to see Ta Prohm if it killed me. Now dubbed The 'Tomb Raider' Temple - Thank you Hollywood, it attracted more people just for that reason. It was beautiful though, to see how the architecture is being supported and destroyed at the same time by the trees. I was pretty tired by the time we got back but we all went out to dinner before going back to the hostel. I was up for another night out but my back is killing me and really needed to lay down.

Tomorrow sees Marion and I doing more Temples but what they call the smaller circuit.

The picture is of me sat below one of the trees at Ta Prohm.