SIEM REIP

We left Bangkok at 5am to catch a taxi to the bus station and arrived 30 mins later ready to catch the 6am bus to the dreaed Poipet border with Cambodia. The 5 hour journey actually went very quickly thanks in main to the tarmac roads! From the border town in Thailand we took a Tuk Tuk to the border crossing where we were met by 'helpful' people who wanted to arrange our visa .... they were so dissappointed / bemused when we explained that we already had a visa! Brief formalities and we crossed in Cambodia ....... wow, the difference was immediate .... the road just stopped, burning rubbish was everywhere and people were transporting their goods on huge carts propelled by a hand crank with the 'driver'sitting on top ....

Made our way to a taxi stop and were told that a taxi to Siem Reip was $60 dollars .... waited for other people to share the taxi with to turn up for an hour then decided to just get there and arranged a taxi for $45. Driver then spent ages trying to phone his friends to see if they wanteed a lift. One flat tyre, several deep fried starlings, a print shop stop, one hitchhiker and a tyre repar shop (repaired tyre with some glue and a leather patch) later (plus another 5 hours) and we reached Siem Reip. The 'road' was appalling'and is said to be non navigable in the wet season ... we can understand why!

Arrived at a guesthouse that we had booked but had to check out the next day as the aircon was set permantly to freezing and could not be turned off (apparently they knew about it but can't get anyone to fix it). Glad we had to move as found a really nice guesthouse just around the corner for half the price.

Siem Reip is a great little town ... fast becoming very touristy but with great local areas (where we stayed) so it was nice to have the western comforts whilst also seeing what local life was like .... mostly food stalls and beer! One thing we noticed was the prevelance of Molotov Cocktail stands everywhere .... petrol in coke bottle are sold everywhere as there are very few petrol stations ..... handy if there happens to be a riot.

As to Angkor ......... words cannot do it justice ..... we spent 3 days cycling around all the temples and we were stunned by the craftsmanship of these people. It was fascinating to look at the different styles of carvings which can be dated according to the dress of the figures depicted in the carvings. Our personal favourite was the Bayon period ...... Angkor Wat? Again truly amazing but for us there were better, more interesting temples and we are not sure why it is that this one gets all the attention ... Angkor Thom has, in our opinion, much more to offer as do many of the other, smaller, seldom visited temples.

We spent a week here enjoying the sights and the relaxed atmospere before booking a river boat to take us down to Battambang .....