Saturday 2 April 2011

Cambodia

Siem Reap


Well our fist stop in Cambodia was going to be Siem Reap, home to the Angkor Wat. We booked our bus through our guest house in Don Det and expected the journey to take aprox 14 hours. Oh how we were mistaken. We eventually made it there 17 hours later . It was 1:30am by the time we got  to a guest house reccommended by a guy from the bus. The hotel was surprisingly good with a nice pool. We managed to get a massive AC room with nice bathroom for $10 p/n which was a bargain. We spent our first day in Siem Reap having a look around the town centre which had a good market and loads of bars and restaraunts. That evening we went out for a meal and a few beers. Now beer is cheap most of the time, maybe £1 but here in Cambodia most places have crazy happy hours that start at 4pm till midnight offering draft beer for $0.50. We had arranged a tuk-tuk for the following day to take us to see the temples of Angkor so decided to have an earlyish night.





The Temples Of The Angkor

We had planned on doing the temples in two days as there was far too much to cram into one day. We organised a tuk-tuk driver and set off for day 1. After collecting our passes ($40 for 3 days) we headed off to the smaller temples surrounding the main areas containing Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. After about 5 hours we were starting to get a bit templed out so we headed back to our hotel to spend the remaining few hours of sunlight near our pool. That evening we went into town for some street food and a few happy hour beers, well it'd be rude not to.









The Angkor Wat & Angkor Thom


Day 2 at the temples and we were up super early so to catch the sunrise over the Angkor Wat. We made it to the enterance about 6am and the sun was just starting to show, it was very busy around the main enterance with everyone waiting for that perfect shot. We spent about one hour wandering around the grounds and taking photo's and then decided to get some breakfast.


Angkor Wat Sunrise




After breakfast we got back in our tuk-tuk and travelled the few Km to the Angkor Thom area where there are several more temples enclosed within a walled complex. These Temples were of different designs and spaced out over several Km. We finished off our Temple tour by visiting the temple used in the tomb raider film. The temples really are an amazing sight to see. However, after 2 days of solid temple viewing and the previous 4 months we are both now well and trulytempled out. We spent the next few days chilling near our pool during the day and  eating out along pub street in the town centre.



Tomb Raider Temple

1 comment:

  1. Just catching up on all of your escapades - and I am still enthralled - keep on blogging and adding photos

    ReplyDelete