Salina Siem Reap

... kickback we managed to get it down to $5 more, which considering the minefield we just went through seemed OK.

After getting a $9 bus to Angkor, being triple charged for a peanut butter sandwich and our bus guide trying to get us into to his friends "special rate hotel" we walked into town to a lovely Jasmin guest house!

Anyway, we survived, and will go to Angkor tomorrow with hopefully a less stressful time!

... nearly empty Angkor Wat. We felt really lucky and privileged to be practically tourist free on our visit. It meant we could meander around the complex without the sudden desire to flee and hide from the melange of pushy Italian, Chinese or Korean tourists. On our way to the Banteay Srei complex we stopped at



a Landmine Musuem which was created by Aki Ra, a former child soldier who works as a deminer. He only uses a knife and a stick ...

... the village on stilts via boat. The boats were 3 km away from where we bought the tickets on a road that had seen much better days. Our tuk-tuk driver unhooked the carriage and took Kyle and his daughter on his motorbike and I hopped on the back of another motorbike. A slow and bumpy ride later, we git into a longboat. The boat had a shallow engine" as the lake itself was only about 3 feet deep in the areas we were motoring ...

... just stopped as we sat back inside our waiting tuk tuk. Somehow our tuk tuk driver didn't turn up in time as promised, so we didn't quite see the sunrise as intended. The sun was still low, and light still soft, so not a great deal was lost from the experience. We crossed the bridge to the Angkor Wat complex, the largest religious building the in the world, ever. This alone is impressive, and once exploring the shadowed hallways, seeing the ellaborate murals and feeling ...

... which I now find is available in lots of Asian party places. $5 for a bucket of your spirit of choice - 2 buckets get you a free t-shirt from the bar Angkor What? so I helped Joe out and we shared 2 buckets (What a nice gal I am)
Raya was our tuk-tuk driver/guide for our 2 days at Angkor Wat - he is the relative of one of my students and a great fellow. It worked out well for both of us - he is learning ...

... way to finish the day. I've noticed when entering souvenir places, the sellers are much more aggressive and persistent in trying to get me to buy something. I try to be as polite as possible but it can be quite trying when they stand over you as you're eating saying "Buy this, buy this".

When we reached the hostel I had the biggest shower known to man as I was sweaty, dirty, gross and disgusting (add any other synonym here as that's ...

... aren't at school just in case...

Banteay Samre has been well restored (by Maurice Glaize) and we scrambled all over it, clambering up steep steps to view all the bas reliefs and out along the causeway where the king must have approached on his elephant (you never know). We've since seen badly restored temples and ones that have been left to nature which are charming – but in this case it was interesting to see a complete ...

... paid for back in bangkok! However, we were greeted with the biggest scam i have seen to date! It was 12 noon when we arrived here, they told us initially that there was no bus and then that the bus would only leave once 35 people were waiting and then that it would arrive at 4pm and then someone else said 2.30pm and leave irrespective of the number of people. There were stories about how the bus took 6 hours and dropped you 4km from the town centre and you wouldn't ...

... he really did ask some money from us = =" A child who approached us when we first entered Pre Rup trying to sell us souvenier, but we just merely express 'no' politely without rejecting directly, but who know when we wanna exit the temple, he came to us again thinking that we gonna buy it 'as promised'. We din buy it, and the child mentioned something that damper the spirit ~.~. Not a good experience consider tat was ...

... for HCMC. So tomorrow is the best time to get the tickets so we know we should have a food chance of getting the early express bus again. One we have looked at in the LP is called an International us, from what I gather this means that whilst you have to get off the bus at the Cambodia//Vietnam border and walk through immigration you get back on the same bus…

We also looked at getting flights to PHU QUOC but they are full, so I think we’re going to go the bus ...