2nd March 2009

The minivan picked us up from our hotel at 7.30am, just in time for a quick breakfast. It wasn't quite the VIP van we had imagined, just a converted Ford Transit with seats added in, but at least it was 2 hours shorter than the regular bus.

The four and a half hour journey passed quickly, but we were unlucky enough to get the back seats which happened to be right over the rear wheels. As the roads in Cambodia can be a little bit rough and unfinished, it felt like a real rollercoaster ride. They should have given us cushions for our heads for the amount of times we were launched out of our seats! We arrived in one piece thankfully, albeit a little dazed at our destination of Siem Reap.

As soon as we ventured out of the minivan we were approached by a tuk tuk driver offering us a free ride to our hotel if we used him for our upcoming three day temple tours. After discussing prices, we agreed and he explained that The Mehkong Angkor Palace Hotel, where we had booked for our stay, was a little noisy due to building work. He showed us a different hotel which had a swimming pool too, but we weren't really too enamoured with it, so we returned to our original choice and checked in. We arranged with our driver to pick us up the following day to begin our tour of the ancient temples and Angkor Wat.

We had a lovely big room at this hotel and there wasn't too much building work going on, just a little around the swimming pool area. After a quick lunch, we used the afternoon to explore the local town and also enjoyed a nice cooling swim in the pool. Siem Reap was looking like a nice and enjoyable town, but boy was it dry and dusty! There was a permanent dust cloud over the main road from all the traffic moving past!

The next morning we woke up in a far from enthusiastic mood for seeing temples, we really needed a day of rest before embarking on a busy three day tour. So after breakfast, Adam went to meet our driver and told him a little white lie, that Clare was feeling poorly today and asked him if we could start the tour tomorrow instead. It was all systems go, we had a full day of rest ahead to prepare ourselves for our temple tour. We spent the day relaxing by the pool and re-energizing for the onslaught of the next three days to follow. It was so hot in Siem Reap, so hot in fact that when Adam asked reception for towels for the pool, the receptionist asked if he had been exercising, as he was sweating so much!

The next day quickly came and we were feeling very excited about seeing these legendary temples. At 10am we were picked up by our tuk tuk driver and we worked out what we wanted to see over the next three days.

Our first stop was the ticketing area, we queued up for our 3 day passes and had our photographs taken, as they put this onto your pass, all very official. Then we headed off to the entrance of the park and into the ancient city of Angkor Thom through the very ornate south gate and already it was looking impressive and magical.

Our first stop was as The Bayon. This is a huge old temple which has vast stone heads carved into the towers and top levels. What was very special is that you could simply wander around and inside this fascinating place through the crumbling passageways and tunnels.

After exploring this amazing place we headed off to The Baphoun which we weren't very impressed with. The walkway up to the entrance was amazing but the actual temple was a little too over restored for our liking.

All the temples and palaces here are still hidden away in the middle of the jungle, so you can only imagine how it was looking around these great buildings as it got nearer to midday.

We walked to our next temple, Phimeanakas, which is a pyramidal building built on a square base. You can even climb up some very old and crumbling steep steps right to the very top of the temple, which gave us a great view over the area.

Next up was the long walk to the Elephant and Leper King Terraces, which had some amazing stone reliefs in a maze of ancient corridors. This gave us some well needed shade as we were getting so hot it was unbelievable. As quickly as we were drinking water, it was just pouring straight out of us! Luckily for us our driver spotted us, came and picked us up and took us to a restaurant for lunch.

Our driver joined us for lunch and we had a very good chat with him. He told us about his family and more harrowingly he told us of his very own sad memories of the Khmer Rouge and how his family had to hide down a trap door to avoid the soldiers. He also told us stories of when he was only eight years old, when he had to crawl across the fields on his chest to avoid the gun fire. At that very moment there was an almighty bang in the restaurant and our driver jumped into the air! It wasn't what we all feared, but a fan blade had fallen off into it's guard and sent splinters flying around the restaurant and fused all the electrics! We were all very glad it wasn't anything more sinister.

After cooling down a little at lunch, we headed off to see Angkor Wat, stopping at the south gate of Angkor Thom to marvel at the impressive gate and bridge. As we arrived at Angkor Wat we were astounded at the sheer scale of the place, it is the largest religious building in the world and 1.5km from end to end. We walked over the moat and onto an ancient causeway, passing up to the main entrance of the temple, it was an impressive sight to see ahead of us. We wandered around the temple and grounds for a good couple of hours, visiting the different levels and walkways. After much exploring we stopped for a well earned drink of water, our hats had come in very handy here and the blazing sunshine. It was 4pm and we were exhausted, it was definitely time to head back to the hotel for a much needed cool down in the pool.

As we arrived back at the hotel it became clear that the building work had got much worse, there were bits of rubble at the bottom of the pool and at one point we had to dodge some flying masonry when we were in the pool! Our minds were made up pretty instantly, we would moving hotels the next day. We had an early night, not only were we tired, but we had an early start the following day to see the sunrise.

We were awake at 5am and we had to leave our packed back packs at reception, so we could check out later in the day. At half past five we were on our way to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise. We made our way to the lotus pond and got ourselves a front row seat the sun come up over the temple. This was a beautiful and serene sight to see and us both wonder how this city would have looked all those years ago.

After a quick breakfast we pressed on and visited another ancient temple in The Eastern Baray. This was another one that you could climb up to the top and it had some spectacular views over the countryside.

We then headed off on a long 30km drive to Bantaey Srey, The Citadel of Women. This was a small temple that had many complex carvings in the sand stone walls, but it was a little spoilt by the sheer number of tourists here. It was however a lovely drive through much farmland and traditional Cambodian villages, which made it worth the while.

On the way back we stopped off at Bantaey Samre which was absolutely stunning. It was like it was straight out of a Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones movie. We wandered around the crumbling temple practically on our own, exploring the tunnels, walkways and hidden rooms, it was just like stepping back through time.

Our last stop for the day was Ta Prohm and we had been especially looking forward to seeing this one. We were dropped off a little way from the temple and had a lengthy walk through the jungle until this ancient ruined building finally came into view. It was simply a magical sight as huge trees were growing through the huge green stained walls while gigantic roots wrapped themselves around the bulging brick work. We explored every inch of this stunning temple, walking through the ruins, amazed at how these massive trees had become part of this eerie building. After a thorough exploration it was back on the tuk tuk and a well deserved lunch.

A short rest later and we were back off to the town to try and find ourselves another hotel. We picked our back packs up and our driver took us to The Encore Angkor Hotel, we had a quick look but it seemed a little expensive, so our driver took us to the previous hotel we decided against on our first day, but they were full now! So back we went to the Encore Angkor Hotel, after all it had a swimming pool and we really needed to cool down. We said goodbye to our driver and checked in quickly, we were given a very nice room here and decided to check out our view from the balcony. We stood and looked down at the pool, noticing something very strange out of the corner of our eyes. It was a pool full of alligators, there was only an alligator farm next door! As we'd had a full ten hour day exploring the temples it was no surprise that we didn't do much else that day.

The next day quickly came and after an excellent breakfast at our new hotel, we met our tuk tuk driver at 9.30am. As we had seen most of the temples we wanted to see over the first two days, we didn't feel up to another gruelling day of them again, so we decided to visit the local silk farm instead.

We had a guided tour around the farm and it was fascinating. We were shown every process, the silk worms hatching, feeding, removing the chrysalis, making the thread, dyeing the fabric and weaving the finished material. Obviously the tour ended in a gift shop and we couldn't resist buying ourselves a little something each!

When we got back to our hotel we said a sad farewell to our driver, who we'd got to know very well, he even invited us to a family wedding! We exchanged email addresses and gave him a little gift of a toy monkey, as his wife was expecting a baby.

We decided to stay on in Siem Reap for a couple more days, as we were really enjoying this laid back town and some well earned R&R. So after a very pleasant six days we booked the normal bus this time back to Phnom Penh.