Mad House Siem Reap

... at lunch time.

The Popular Guesthouse was quite central and each evening we walked down Pub St. (tourist downtown central). In general Siem Reap is a nice town, well developed with a very cosmopolitan downtown area alongside the river. It has an international airport and MANY people fly in just to do Angkor Wat.
The streets and alleyways around Pub St. are jam packed with restaurants, happy hour drinks and free wi-fi. We sat in road side ...

... in the tuk tuk and we have a flat tyre again...oh the joys!! Kicked back in the sun we relax whilst it is fixed and then head back to the city where we have some lunch and sort out accommodation for tomorrow night and beyond.

In the evening we head into town for a meal and a few drinks...a few drinks of paint stripper and far to many jugs of 30 pence beer!! I just remember sitting on the toilet hanging my head between my knees and then lying back before projecting vomit ...

... then out into the street in search of a nocturnal tuk-tuk driver. Bizarrely, no sooner had I turned left into the street and begun to head up to the main road, then a mini bus parked further ahead of me flicked its lights on and accelerated towards me at pace, coming to a quick halt right next to me. Not wanting to be abducted I took a step to the side, but the driver said "Airport?" so I (correctly, thank god) assumed he was just diligent and overly ...

... around. It was so peaceful and the views were amazing. After the sunset, we headed back down the mountain to get to the bus so that we could head to dinner. Dinner was at the Red Orchid, and faculty members sang karaoke and line-danced. Apparently everyone in Thailand sings karaoke, and people usually perform for one another when they travel to other countries. So I should have been surprised when one of the deans was on stage finishing her karaoke ...

... students decided to go to Phnom Penn a day earlier because of that, and I decided to stay behind, not ready to give up. Not wanting to sit around doing nothing, I teamed up with another guest in the hotel and hired a tuk-tuk, trying to go a lake south of the city, over flooded roads, but we finally had to turn back and when we stopped at a roadside restaurant to have lunch we found out that they just killed a big cobra that day so we had run into a good meal without ...

... this amazing technology, and the same design is used in buildings here today.

The stones fit together in an air-tight seal. The walls that are still standing - you couldn't fit a butter knife between the joints. The stones are kept together using tongue-and-groove, key-fit, and other joints. The stones were cut from both a mountain over 50 kilometers away, and from a local source less than 15 kilometers away. See the ...

... arrived at the temple still under the cover of darkness. We were offered breakfast, coffee and a deckchair to relax and watch the sunrise over the 800 year old building with a crowd of around a hundred people. It's a spectacle you have to experience if ever in Siem Riep as aside from drinking in the many bars in town there's not much else to do. The breakfast was extra tasty that morning as the guy ...

... if you wipe with a wet tissue. No kidding..



However the sceneries along our way to Ta Prohm is really marvellous ...

... arranged for him to take me see the temples. He initially came with his car but this would have been to expensive to hire for the day. So I told him to get his motor bike which would be considerably cheaper to hire for the day. We first went to the Bangkok Airlines for me to change my ticket, since I was in Siem Reap, I wanted to fly straight to Bangkok the next day. Rather than going back to Phnom Penh.

Before you can see the temples you have to buy a pass ...

A declared lay day after a few early and long days. After breakfast we took tuc-tucs to the masseurs -- blind Cambodians. Nice, but a bit too gentle. Then a tuc-tuc back into the central market to do some shopping. Interesting that not much took our fancy, though Mandy bought a lovely elephant bracelet. Lunch at a cafe, then we walked up to the tourist market. Several hundred stalls all selling the same 10 t-shirts ...