Central Boutique Angkor Hotel Siem Reap

... Relief Museum that was created by a man called Aki Ra. Aki Ra was a child soldier with the Khmer Rouge, but now he works to find and disarm landmines as he has seen firsthand the devastating effects of these weapons. It was here that I learned that landmines were never meant to kill. They were meant just to maim people, as strategically, an injured soldier is much more costly than a dead one. How awful is that? How could people do this ...

... large portion of the profits goes towards getting kids off the streets.

The next day was fairly relaxing, we slept in until 1pm with hangovers and then paid to go to one of a nearby hotels pool for a swim and arranged our trip with a local tuk tuk driver to take us to Angkor Wat for the day. We met the same guys again that evening to arrange heading up to northern Cambodia to do a jungle trek, in the end only 4 of us decided to go, Raj ...

... was listed as to
what was in those areas including color photos, historic info,
religious significance and the like. It has maps and area breakdowns
by quadrant – pretty much everything my friend Bruce would drool
over for months to come. I actually found myself sitting up at night
poring over the pages myself.

I got all kinds of little leather bracelets and baubles to reward the
kids with and to quiet the Vn assts who I ...

... and men trying to take you around their dusty town on their tuk-tukn (should start avoiding the touristy places), one man was willing to GIVE us his tuk-tuk for the whole day for about $5. This is also the only place in the world where people offer you taxis when you're already in one. I hate hangovers. Nevertheless, we where here to see the Angkor Wat Temples. Kate stayed at home whilst Kim, Clare and I got up at 5.30am for a day of temples. We were ...

... out of baby crocodiles. We saw a traditional Cambodian dance performance. The Apsara dancers do lots of hand motions that symbolize specific things and part of their training is to increase their flexibility in their hands so they can arch their fingers backwards. The dances and costumes were neat. Apsaras are carved into the stone all over Angkor and I think they are called “heavenly dancers” keeping an eye on things.

... Embassy' in Poipet on the Thai-Cambodian border. It was a small open fronted shack with two or three guys in official outfits who spoke to us in perfect English. We sat down and filled out the forms that were to let us through. When it came to payment we asked to see the visa that was to be put into our passport as we had been forewarned that this border crossing is notorious for tourists being ...

... Mean Temly (a fellow 1979er) said that the city’s activity at this hour was a mixture of people rising for the work day and people who had not crawled home yet from the night before. Siem Reap is an all-nighter of a city—if you are into that ;)

Our guide Mean, was a wealth of dates, the metric system, and the intricacies of the Hindu and Buddhist theologies. He took his job very seriously and wanted us to known ...

... quite nice, got a few looks for being farangs (westeners) when we got on board. Its a 5hour bus journey and was ok - Aly had her iPod but mine was dead (cheers Lows) so I watched 5 hours worth of Thai ''karoke' thats like 10minute Bollywood-esque stories in song. Sam story every sodding time.. Girl Boy work together, boy has girlfriend, girl likes boy/used to go out, boy and girlfirend really happy, girl sad..., boy give girlfriend similar necklace that he gave to girl, girl ...

... unfinished statue of the horse, Balaha - one of the incarnations of Bodhisattva Lokesvara, in the main pond. It was not the most interesting temple, but one of
the most unique.

On the way back to the main road I purchased a mango to eat. It was so good and so fresh and sweet. Much better than ants in my salad! We took a picture of the lady who sold me the mango
carving a pineapple.

Som took us to Ta Som next. This temple was built by ...

... surely wither and die in the heat. What about walking, the central ruins were not that far apart? Impossibly far to walk, people said. Maybe we could hire a scooter and drive to Banteay Srei, a serene temple some thirty five kilometres away ? You could do but the road is atrocious and there are armed bandits - many tourists are injured doing this - and you will get lost as there are no signposts (I was later told about something horrific that happened to someone who ignored this warning ...