Cambodia

What a surprise Cambodia is so far. After leaving Bangkok and its protests behind at 8am Monday morning, we arrived in Siem Riep at 8pm that evening. The things that surprised me were: How good the roads are and how flat the land is (from the border all the way into town was mostly fields). When we got to Siem Riep we were also surprised by the amount of nice hotels too. I don't know why, but I was expecting Cambodia to be more jungly and lush. Maybe I have just seen to many Vietnam war films!!!! Anyway we like it here. We found a nice hotel with air con and fan for $10 a night. We actually need both on at times as it has been touching 36 degrees some days!!! There are also plenty of nice restaurants too plus a sprinkling of typical foodstalls. And there are also BAGUETTES...mmmmmm + the Cambodian people have been very nice. Most of them speak some English and I have tried to say "Hello", "goodbye" and "thankyou" in Khmer when possible. We have also noticed how young most Cambodians seem to be. We read this fact somewhere and believe it is as a result of the atrocities that happened here under Pol pot and the Khmer rouge regime. We will find out more about that when we visit Phnom phen!!!! Plus women seem to think the wearing silk or cotton pyjamas is fashionable...Perhaps it is????

On Tuesday we got our bearings and borrowed some bikes from the hotel with the intention of seeing if it was feasible to cycle around the various sights and attractions..Its not!!!!! Although the traffic is quite light, it does have the habit of coming from all directions including the wrong way at times. It is also too hot for such activities..well for us anyway lol.

On Wednesday (having decided not to cycle) we got a one day pass to Angkor Wat and did a short tour via tuk-tuk. The whole complex stretches out over 400 km2, including forested area, Angkor Archaeological Park contains the remains of different capitals of the Khmer Empire, from the 9th to the 15th century and over 100 temples. Our short trip only covered a small section of this area but still took nearly 8 hours in total. The main attractions we saw were: The huge temple of Angkor Wat, the Bayon Temple with its many heads and Ta Prohm of the film "Tomb raider" fame which nature was slowly reclaiming.

We started the day being picked up by our tuk-tuk at 5am and headed to Angkor Wat temple for sunrise. Having seen this, we had breakfast and explored the temple before we headed off for Bayon. As you can see from some of the photos, Bayon was covered in head sculptures. It was really nice and Eri's favourite.

After that we headed to another temple and climbed the narrow and steep stone steps to the top. Getting up was tricky at times but not as tricky as coming down lol....

The last big temple was Ta Prohm; this was my favourite and a lot of others too it seems by the amount of people around. The complex was falling apart in places and this was mostly due to the giant trees (and I mean GIANT) that were growing on and over the buildings and walls. Some of these trees were growing on top of 20 foot buildings and walls with their roots sprawling down, through, out and over the stonework. This made the place look absolutely stunning!!! Hopefully you can see what I mean from some of the pictures:

Today we are just chilling out before we leave tomorrow for the capital Phnom Phen and have also bought a new tee shirt as I have had to throw away my red FCUK tee shirt which is just getting too scruffy now. The green FCUK on will be the next to go. Regular readers of this blog will know which tee shirts I am talking about as they both made up 1 third of my clothing and can be seen in numerous pictures here on this blog lol.....At least I will have the photos to remember them by :-(

We also both like Cambodian food, it is similar in style to Thai food but much less spicy and more pleasant to eat in the heat when you are already
hot enough....