We arrived in Siem Reap after a 6 hour boat journey from Phnom Penh. The trip was interesting as we passed lots of villages where the houses were built on the water rather than on land, with a lot of the local kids waving to the boat as it passed. We got off the boat via another of those 8" wide planks onto what is essentially the river bed in the wet season. It was so muddy that Barry had to get out and push our tuk-tuk which had got stuck as we travelled into the town (15km away)!
Anyway, we made to our hotel and spent the rest of the day wandering around the town. It's fairly touristy but has a good market and lots of cafes and restaurants so is a good place to spend a few days.
We got a three day pass to the Angkor temples, most famous of which is Angkor Wat. We managed to 'negotiate' a reasonable price with the tuk-tuk driver we had from the boat to take us around the temples & ruins for 3 days as they are quite far apart (from 5 to 35 km from Siem Reap for the ones we wanted to see). The sights were very impressive, not least Angkor Wat itself which was amazing to see in real life and really appreciate the sheer size of it and other constructions, all of which date from between the ninth and 12th centuries. It was however, extremely hot to be walking around in the sun all day, and at the end of the first couple of days we were fairly exhausted. On day three we only saw a few sites and then packed it in by lunchtime - 'templed out'!
We then had the best part of a day and a half to take it easy in Siem Reap - visiting the market & making the most of the decent choice of cheap cafes, bars & restaurants as well as catching up on our emails & travel blog. So all in all Siem Reap & Angkor has been a good place to come, and we're feeling refreshed and ready for the next stage of our travels - Vietnam. We catch a plane this evening to Hanoi, from where we will spend a week or so travelling our way south to Ho Chi Minh. We understand the weather is quite cold for the time of year in south China according to the news, and hopefully we will get a chance to cool down a bit in Hanoi, before we move south again!
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