Feb 19 - Another early start, and we wandered out of our hotel at five-thirty-ish. After the photo episode yesterday, we'd joked a little bit about being in a tuk-tuk version of Fatal Attraction, but hadn't thought too hard about it. Our driver grabbed my hand; "Did you sleep well?" He grinned, and showed no signs of letting go. "Did you dream about me last night? I dreamed about you." No exaggeration, that's exactly what he said...

I didn't know what to say, and scrambled for some response; "Errr. I think we'd like to go to Angkor Wat again," I mumbled, trying to back into the tuk-tuk and extricate my hand (and now arm) from his grip. I was not equipped to deal with this at 5:30 in the morning. Cheryl & I looked at each other in slightly stunned silence as he took off for the 15 minute trip. "Do you think this is just the way people are here?" I asked. "No." she said, "This is just weird. It's your fault for asking for another day last night." We planned our escape, and scampered off into the temple before the tuk-tuk had come to a complete halt outside the gates of Angkor Wat.

This time there was no lingering outside. We crossed the causeway with the flocks of other tourists and came out into the central courtyard of Angkor Wat in the pale pre-dawn glow. Athough many people had arrived for sunrise, the temple is so huge that it didn't feel at all crowded. We watched the sun come up, reflected in the two huge pools which flank the internal causeway. This sight was spectacular, and must be even more so at the end of the wet season, when the pools are full to overflowing. We wandered around for a couple of hours, amazed as always by the extent and intracacies of this place, and then found a decent-looking food stall to have breakfast. We heard another couple talking about their flight to Hanoi that afternoon. Apparently it was still close to zero degrees, and we were really thankful that we'd changed our itinerary early on.

We thought it would be rude to ditch our driver this early (close call, though), and so we decided to go and see the Roulos Group of temples. These are on the opposite side of Siem Reap to the main complexes of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, and are early constructions (9th century). There were two main temple groups, Preah Koh and Bakong, and these were interesting, with some large stone sculptures still surviving. We climbed around Bakong, which is a huge pyrimid-shaped structure. Large carved elephants (about 1m high) are mounted on the corners of each layer of the temple, and apart from one tour group which came for a fifteen minute stop and then left, it was almost completely empty. There was a peaceful lake surrounding the whole complex, and chants fom the functioning monastery which adjoins the ruins helped to restore some of our equillibrium.

At some stage, you come to the conclusion that there's only so much archeological beauty you can take in without your head exploding. Cheryl and I sat down on the top tier of Bakong temple, forty metres high and surrounded by the pinnacle of 9th century Khmer artistry, and realised that we were suffering from extreme temple fatigue. We made our way down, asked our driver to take us back to the hotel, and paid him for the day. We told him we were leaving the next day (not exactly true) and hoped we wouldn't be stalked. (In the end, we didn't see him again, and still can't work out if he was just being friendly...)

The hotel pool was great. We spent the afternoon loafing on loungers and swimming. I felt a bit guilty that we hadn't seen everything there was to see, but only for about five minutes! We flipped through our travel guide, and made some rough plans for the next few weeks - first going to some of the more remote temple sites (Koh Ker, Preah Vihear), then heading to the Eastern Provinces of Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri before making our way overland into Laos. The Lonely Planet helpfully pointed out that we couldn't get a visa at the border, where we realised (again with the 20:20 hindsight!) that we should have organised our visa in Phnom Penh. Luckily our hotel manager was able to help out, but our passports had to be couriered to the embassy for a three-day turnaround, and so we had a few more days to spend in Siem Reap.

"Where shall we go tomorrow?" I wondered aloud to Cheryl. "You must be joking," she said. "I'm staying right here. I've earned a day or two of rest after tromping up and down all those sites. Go and play with your blog." She was right of course, and it was great to go to sleep without the 5AM alarm set.

The next day we just chilled out some more. We got hold of Nina and Linda, the two girls that we'd met on our boat trip, and planned to meet up for dinner that night. Apart from that, I spent a bit of time with the hotel manager arranging transport for the next leg of our trip. We were going to head out in a circuit to Koh Ker, Prasat Preah Vihear (a temple on the Thai border), Preah Kahn and Sambor Prei Kuk. Some bits of it were manageable by public transport, but many were not - the roads to Preah Kahn are apparently particularly grim. In the end we decided to hire a driver with a 4WD, who would drop us down in Kompong Thom at the end of our trip.

Just had time for a quick massage and another swim before setting off into Siem Reap proper for dinner. It's an odd little town at night, I guess it could be anywhere tropical - full of tanned, loud backpackers eating and drinking - except that all the names have "Angkor" or "Temple" in them. There are some wierd little restaurants, including a place called the Dead Fish Tower; it's advertising strapline reads: "Why we so popular? Doesn't serve cat, rat, dog or worm!" Despite that glowing bit of self-recommendation, we went to the Temple restaurant instead, and had a pretty good meal while we talked to Linda and Nina about the performing work they'd been doing with some children's groups in Siem Reap. As before, it was great to see them, and we got home at midnight-ish, feeling tired & full.