Hey Everyone!

We travelled from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap in a 15 seater minibus for five and a half hours. The journey was one of our better, quicker journeys and our hotel in Phnom Penh had arranged for their sister hotel in Siem Reap to send someone to pick us up from the drop off point. We hopped into our tuk tuk where we were taken to "King Angkor", at $7 a night it was slightly over our intended budget but far cheaper than we'd paid previously. For $7 we got a fan room, a bathroom WITH A BATH (something we haven't seen since we were in Hong Kong!), free wifi, cable TV and a nice room.

After a short chill out in our room, we made our way into the city centre. We sat at a nice bar and had pasta for lunch while sitting on the internet trying to sort out places to stay over Christmas and New Year, down on the islands. We thought we ought to look into booking somewhere, as we have a feeling a) places may be full and b) they could charge us anything they want as we would be stuck on the island with nowhere to stay if we said no. After chilling for a while we set off for a walk to see what treats Siem Reap had to offer, just a few metres down the road we met a guy who was selling fish massages!! We have wanted to try one for a while so we decided to give it a go! Sophie managed to keep her feet in with the fish while they gnawed away at whatever dead skin they could find! Kie was totally rubbish and could only manage to keep his feet in for a couple of seconds before the tickling sensation was too much and he had to remove them - he did, however, manage to keep his heels in for the whole time but the toes were a no no!!!

While getting our fish massages we got talking to a tuk tuk driver who said about taking us to the temples in the morning for photos at sunrise; it was going to cost us $20 dollars each for a ticket and he said he would drive us between the temples for $12 dollars, we decided this was a good price and arranged for him to pick us up at 4:30am so that we would be at Angkor Wat in time to see the sunrise. Knowing that we had to be up so early we decided to have some dinner and head back to the room for an early night in front of the TV.

So, 04:30 came and as agreed the tuk tuk driver was up and waiting outside of the hotel when we emerged blurry eyed and tired. 20 minutes later we arrived at Angkor Wat and a local restaurant owner "Mr. James Bond" told us the best place to stand and instructed us to go to his restaurant for breakfast so we stood in front of the lake at the temple and prepared ourselves for the long wait… after a couple of hours (and after being joined by about 500 people) the sun rose and the view was amazing. Once the sun was fully up and our breakfast was gulped down, we explored the insides of the amazing structure taking lots of photos.

We then headed back to the tuk tuk to move onto the rest of the temples we were visiting that day, all of the temples were different from one another and each amazing in their own way, we even visited the one where the Tomb Raider film was shot. Once we'd exhausted all of the temples we headed back to the guest house to chill and snooze before heading out to eat at the restaurant opposite so that Kie could have his new favourite meal - Khmer Beef Lok Lac and Sophie could dive into some fried noodles with pork.

Tonight we've been to the Night Market which turned out to be one of the best markets we've been to as it was so neat, tidy and spaced out. Naturally everything took Sophie's fancy and, having looked around a few times, she couldn't resist a few buys. Kie was also taken in by the market charm and bought himself a multicoloured hammock. After walking around for a while we headed home with a bag of goodies and big smiles.

Tomorrow we're heading back to Phnom Penh early doors which will be another five hour journey. We're actually quite sad to be leaving Siem Reap, despite it being a large, bustling city it still manages to feel incredibly calm and quiet. There are so many streets to explore and wonderful places to sit and pass the day. It's a shame we couldn't stay longer, but big cities tend to come with a price - cheap by English standards, expensive by budget standards!! Tomorrow is the national day of mourning in rememberance of the people who died at the Water Festival in Phnom Penh, so we're slightly anxious as to how the feeling will be upon our return. We imagine it'll be quite overwhelming and a very different atmosphere to the one we experienced during the Water Festival just a matter of days ago.

As usual, we'll be updating you all on our whereabouts very soon.

Look after yourselves, missing you - lots of love Sophie and Kie xx