To Angkor Wat

We caught a late bus to Siem Reap. The bus was for local too so we found ourselves sent to the back of the bus with the roosters in the bamboo bags. Yes they'd even poked little holes in the bags so the roosters could breath. Thoughfull really seeing as the poor roosters were sideways and squashed into a tight space between peoples' feet and the floor. About 3/4 of the way through the bus ride after I'd already tried to keep these bags upright and out of the way of locals' feet - someone noticed the roosters weren't moving anymore and their bags were wet. The driver stopped the bus by a pond and got all the roosters out of their bags. 2 were awake the others had either fainted from the insane heat on the bus (no aircon/no open windows) or had just died. A few people took the roosters down to the pond to bathe them, give them water and try to revive them. It didn't work, but soon the awake roosters were running happily down the isle of the bus. It was at about this time that a lady got on the bus holding a baby black bear like it was her own child. It stumbled around on the ground for a little bit and the rest of the time she was cradling it. Very strange ride indeed. The road was really good and when we got to the bus stop we were thankful we'd left our name at our guesthouse for someone to meet us from the bus and take us to the sister guesthouse. The touts were the craziest we'd seen and I was sure we'd be mugged or have something stolen by the children dodging through our feet and touching our pouches and pockets. Aparently on other days the cops hold these touts back and sometimes even fire guns into the sky. We jostled through the men all holding signs that read, "I won't hassle you, I have cheap guesthouse for cheap" all these men were hassling us. We followed the man with our names on the sign to the van that took us quickly away from this crazy scene of overdone zest. James was there and our new friends, Tilly & Wayne from the curry night! Just like in the sister guesthouse in PP there were motorbike drivers lazing around trying to get us to go with them to Angkor Wat the next day. There truly is no escape. Luckily these guys were quite chill and nice to just hang out with.

1 Trying to save the overheated chickens

Angkor is 6-7 km from Siem Reap and Ben and I decided it would be cheap and good excercise to ride bikes around the ruins for the day. I've already given enough history for 1 country so if you want to learn about Angkor and all the generations of kings who outdid each other by building temples infulenced by Hindi priests living in Cambodia at the time....then knock yourself out. In total for the day we rode about 50 km around the shorter circuit after we almost got turned away at the entrance because we didn't have our ticket yet (wrong turn missed the booth), getting lost in the jungle (hello land mines???) and me getting a flat tyre. There are many locations in which the temples are found, but we stuck to the main complex as we only had a couple of days. There's so much to see you could spend weeks and never see it all. These temples are huge and magnificent and in total ruins. The kingdoms were lost in history with only a few people coming across them until the famous French Guy took detailed notes about what he saw and spiraled Angkor back into the spotlight. Now restoration goes on all the time funded by various countries. Some of the ruins are left as is with huge trees growing onto and around some temples. The reliefs carved into the stone are incredibly detailed. I can't imagine how long it must have taken. There are some temples whose walls are completely carved into reliefs. On the down side there are children everywhere trying to sell you the exact same thing and some adults. The 1st day we were there these people were really polite and wished us luck and a great visit when we tole them we didn't want anything. At Angkor Wat we parked our bikes for the sunset at one of the many spots 'owned' by someone who'll watch your bike if you buy something. The price wasn't right for what we wanted to we bought elsewhere and ended up having this 10 year old boy threaten to f--k our bikes up if we left them there in 'his' space. Ben threatened to f--k him up if our bikes were touched. You aren't allowed to park your bikes anywhere else so we had no choice to move them near some trusty moto drivers to watch. I barely made it back that night as my arse hurt so much and I was biked out man!! Ben and I also both got heat rash.

Ankor Temples

Our 2nd day was a breeze - we paid to go in a tuk tuk. Oh the joy, the bliss. We spent the day doing the longer route and going over bits we'd missed the day before. Our tuk tuk kept over heating and at one point ran out of gas/petrol, but we didn't care we were taking it easy. At one point I found myself surrounded by about 15 children all shoving bracelets in my face saying, "you buy, one dollar" I couldn't get to the tuk tuk. I wish we had have had more time and that it wasn't so expensive. I wanted to really inform myself when we got here, but got by with the basics.

That night I had to get a cash advance because I'd spent way more than I had bugeted for - in the 1st time since we'd left!

Ankor Wat and sunset

Bayon

Gang of Monks

how to use a a toliet

hows this for a cheery sign

I took this while riding my bike

Preah Kean

Ta Prohm

Ta Prohm 2

The sweeping guy

This guy was beggin for it