After leaving mum we got our overnight bus to Bangkok, where we spent a couple of days planning our next move and checking out the sights and sounds of Bangkok.

We decided to head to Chaturburi, to get closer to the boarder as the main boarder between Bangkok and Siem Reap is well known for its scams!!! Ranging from the real concrete building they have built as a pretend visa office, to the taxi stand next to the police station where they over charge like crazy!

So we chose the Ban Pakard boarder to cross. We got a minibus to the border town, which all went fine, despite our initial concern as we were the only tourists on the bus and the elderly driver seemed to be picking up all his OAP mates along the way so we weren't sure where we would end up!!

We avoided the first scammer trying to get 26 us dollars out of us for the visa, we walked across to Cambodia without any hassle, the visa fella was on his tea break, so we ended up waiting about 15mins for him, but then we got our 20 dollar visa no problems!!

We were very proud of ourselves at this moment, feeling all our research had paid off....so we knew we had to get to Battembang by taxi, to then get a bus to Siem Reap. At all borders there are drivers there offering your journey, so after a bit of negotiation we got the price we wanted to get to Battembang and set off.....this journey is meant to take about 90mins, for us it was closer to 60min...The driver regularly travelled between the 90-100 m.p.h and if he didn't beep the horn every 15 seconds we knew it was because he was on his phone and didn't have a free hand!!

It would turn out to be the easiest part of our journey! We got taken to a random street somewhere near Battembang where we were met by a second driver wanting to take us to Siem Reap....we spent about 15mins telling them we wanted to get the bus, only to be told 'there are no buses, there is no bus till 8pm, there is no bus till tomorrow morning, and finishing with there are no buses'!!! We kept saying it was fine, just to take us to the bus station...so eventually we asked the price in this shared taxi....it started at 15, then 12 and we agreed on 8...again our research told us this was the right price...

So we got in and set off, all was fine for Phil, but Shane was getting a bit of unwanted attention...the fella sat next to him was stroking his arms and then rested his head on Shanes shoulder...you can imagine how happy Shane was about that!! So he removed his head and told him no very firmly!!!

So we dropped off these 2 other fellas and then stopped in a market somewhere...where the driver got out for a chat with the others...about 30mins later he put us into this heap of a car and told us it would be taking us the rest of the way!! We weren't impressed by that part...but it became even less impressive!! There were 3 adults in the back, no major problem there, but there were 4 adults and a child in the front seat!! With someone sharing the driving seat with the driver!!! Needless to say the last part of the journey was not at all enjoyable and we were just hoping to get to our hostel in one piece!!!

What a day!!!

After that we spent a few days in Siem Reap, the main attraction here is Angkor Wat, which the Lonely Planet calls the eighth wonder of the world. We got up at 4am to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious building. The clouds had other ideas though, and decided to cover the sun, so it was more just a sky lightening than anything else!!! It is best to be starting the temple tour at that time anyway as it means that you can see a good bit before it gets stupidly hot!!! Luckily for us the day was overcast, so we didn't melt too much!! We also checked out Angkor Thom, with its demons and gods in the entrance way, Bayon temple, with 216 faces, the Terrace of the Elephants, the terrace of the Leper King, Ta Prohm (Tomb Radier), which has been taken over by the jungle, and was probably our favourite temple!!! From there we made our driver a deal to take us to Banteay Seri, which is really fine carved pink stone temple, 21km away. In our little tuk tuk this took a while but the journey there was great as we got to see rice paddies, water buffalo and the local life.

The rest of our time in Siem Reap was spent chilling, planning, walking around town and trying to find some good food!!The highlight of this time was playing crazy golf on a great little course, where they reward a hole in one with a free beer....Phil got it, Shane drunk the beer so it was winning all round!!

Next up is Phnom Phen.