Shambhala Resort & Spa Siem Reap

"In America spider eat man. In Cambodia man eat spider." --notable quote by a random Cambodian man we met today (and followed by maniacal laughter)<br><br>We had a lazy start to the day, rolling out of bed at 7:30 am. We enjoyed a simple breakfast at the hotel before heading out for our final day of temple trekking.<br><br>We hired a new tuk-tuk driver who spoke considerably less English than our last driver, Polin. Our plan was to take in some of the ...

... a restaurant called 'Nest' - big white beds, chilled out music and mozzie coils near your feet - luxury!! Treated our tuk tuk driver to a take-away desert for waiting for us aswel! <br>Next day was a full day at the Angkor temples. First we visited Angkor Thom (one of the largest Khmer cities of the 12 century), then the Ta Prohm temple which has been left in the state (kind of) in which it was found in the 19th century, with trees intertwined through the building ...

... as a good sign. God knows why they had crocodiles there - we couldn&#8217;t get an answer in understandable English from anyone and so in the end just gave up. It was a sort of crocodile farm - or at least they weren&#8217;t wild in the river and lived in a contained area but we don&#8217;t know where they came from or what their purpose was. <br> The drive back into town was just as wonderful - as it&#8217;s the middle of the rainy season here half the houses are submerged in the ...

... because we are rich.<br><br>Over all it was a good three days. People often would yell out hello as we went by just to be friendly or interact with us--I think children in particular find us interesting because we are white and they can practice their English with us. I am slowly getting used to a celebrity-like status. <br><br> We were in Siem Reap for a total of six days so we started to get the sense of the town. Most of the ...

... date, height, width, religious significance, commissioning god-king, &#8220;friend country&#8221; paying for restoration, encroaching flora and fauna, etc. for every temple, gate, carving, walkway, pool, bridge, wall, roadway we came in contact with&#8230;and he could not be deterred. It was a lot to digest. Sprinkle on top of this his discussions of the more recent tragic history of the region with heat exhaustion and you have a ...

... 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 ...

... gut feeling which said "this is not the Visa department"....turns out my gut was correct. Lesson learnt there! Met a few other people travelling on to Siem Reap and the best way to do the 3 hour journey is to pile in a taxi for a tenner each. The car was roasting, the drivers are maniacs but we made it there in one piece (although I probably sweated out about half a stone throughout the journey). Got a room in Siem Reap ...

... br><br><br><br>This is not a river nor a lake. It's a man made 'drain' that surrounds the Angkor Wat. According to Fengshui, the ...

... its called "Deadfish". Since we already had lunch, we just ordered beer and relaxed. After 2 hours, we left.<br><br> Back in our room, we ate the crickets and had fun taking pictures of ourselves eating them. Then it started raining outside, we took some rest before heading out to the market area for a simple dinner at a roadside stall.<br>

... lose a cow in. This could not be said to be a road. Seeing as it was the dry season, some vehicles disregarded the road entirely and just drove over the rice fields, raising huge clouds of dust as they did so. We were pleased we hadn't opted for the cheapest form of transport on this occasion. This would have involved being packed into the open back of a pickup truck with twenty others. We passed many of these vehicles, some of which were being driven recklessly fast, and ...