Alice on ancient rubble

Trip Start Nov 15, 2008
1
6
18
Trip End Feb 28, 2009


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Thursday, December 4, 2008

Typically the morning we left Ton Sai, after 2 hours sleep and with just enough Baht scrapped together for the boat to Au Nang, the clouds parted, the sky turned luminous blue and the sun beat down on our Mojito beaten bodies. But it was still lovely to see and it did follow us to Cambodia. We spent one night at a hostel in kuala Lumpar, which was spent only sleeping to catch up on the night before but we did get to eat some 'street food' (gotta love that term), Tom Sum with seafood and it was delicious and the locals were very friendly.

We got up at 3.30am and got a taxi back to the airport, then arrived bright and early in a very hot and very clean and efficient Siem Reap airport. Rosy Guest House is excellent and we got up the first day and had omlette, chioops and salad. Sometimes you just gotta go Western! The Old Market in Siem Reap is excellent, piles and piles of silk and clothes and bags. Zoe was in her element and managed to buy almost as much as she subsequently sent on to NZ, in order to make her bag lighter. Honestly, she's like a turtle on her back with her back-pack on.

Yesterday we spent the day in Angkor Wat. We hired bikes and although we didn't quite make sunrise at the temple (by about 5 hours), we cycles about 15-20km going there and visiting Angkor Thom and we went up to Phonm Bakeng for sunset, which was beautiful but basically a big circus of Japanese with state of the art cameras. So we left and met two Welsh boys (literally almost every guy we have met has been 23) who we had met earlier in the airport and we had great pizza and then went to Angkor What? for pitchers of Cuba Libre. Siem Reap has a very Parisian, friendly, cool and relaxed atmosphere. I would love to see Kep down South because that is really supposed to be French, but I'm running out of time so we're heading up to Laos tomorrow to the 4000 Islands which are at the mouth of the Mekong and then I'll leave Zoe and head to Vietnam or we'll head North towards Vientiane. It depends on whether or not I can get my flight changed so i don't have to go fly to Adelaide from Bangkok. Time is flying....

Oh and Jummy told me I got my job at the LDA, so no redundancy and living out the year teaching diving in Zanzibar I guess......ah well.

xx

On our last day, before leaving Siem Reap we sent late afternoon seeing a temple called Preah Khan and then we went Angkor Wat for sundown. These were my favourite temples. The construction and design was stunning and in both temples, even though they are quite different, the presence and majesty of the ancient structures was deafening. I've added more photos.

xx
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