Siem Reap

Next stop on my trip was what ended up being a very fleeting visit to the famous temples outside the town of Siem Reap. Even though the trip was short you should prepare yourselves for the number of photos that this blog will contain. I arrived in Siem Reap on one of the greatest buses I have ever traveled on; only 3 seats per row and each one the size of a reclining sofa. All of that for a $1 premium over the standard bus that happened to be sold out. Anyway that "interesting" story out of the way, I booked into a hostel for the night and then went to get drunk. The next morning the first hostel that I had checked into kicked me out as they had booked out the bed I was in. I wasn't too unhappy when I managed to find a new place to stay for $2 a night... even if it did only have 3 walls and half a roof (I wish I was exaggerating).

Once the new place was secure me and Megan, a girl I had met in Phnom Penh, grabbed a Tuk Tuk who would be our temple tour guide; for the next two days. The first day the plan involved doing a short loop around some of the temples including Angkor Thom (below) and the "Tomb Raider" temple (above).

The next day we were supposed to be up at 4:30 to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. Of course this seemed like the perfect time to go out and drink until after half 1 in the morning. Sleep was made even less likely by what I can only assume was some sort of dinosaur, rawr'ing (spelt how Fil would approve) on the half roof. Either way after about 2 hours of sleep I was up and off towards the temple.

Thanks to performing my standard level of research on what to do at the temples when we arrived at Angkor Wat we had no idea where to go in the pitch black (obviously I didn't take my torch). Eventually we found the temple and a small lake outside the front of it, the bank of which proved to be a great place to watch the sun rise from.

After the sunrise we went in to explore the rest of Angkor Wat and inside discovered a monk praying at the feet of a large Buddha statue. Not an uncommon sight in Asia but nice to spot whilst at the largest religious building in the world.

The rest of the day was filled with temple after temple after temple... This was interrupted only by a few reminders that we were in the middle of a forest visiting temples that had only partially been reclaimed from the trees.

Towards the middle of the second day I realised that I was looking forward to the Tuk Tuk ride between temples rather than the temples themselves. At this point Pete's suggestion of meeting him at the beach seemed pretty irresistible and when I got back to town I booked the night bus for that evening.

The final day I was in Siem Reap happened to be Australia day so drinking 3 pitchers of cheap beer proved a  suitable way to celebrate, and also helped the night bus to go much more smoothly!