Kampuchea here I come!

Trip Start Feb 19, 2007
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Trip End Sep 04, 2007


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Flag of Cambodia  ,
Sunday, July 6, 2008

Woke up early on a Saturday morning to get our tourist bus from Ko San Road in Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Now we kind of knew that getting the tourist bus to Cambodia was probably not the best idea but it was cheap and right from where we were staying as opposed to it taking over an hour to get to the public bus station. So we waited outside our hotel at 8am and an hour and a half later a guy showed up to bring us to our bus. Was getting a little worried that he was not going to show up. However turns out, I never changed my watch time when we left Malaysia (apparently there is a one hour time difference) and we had been on the wrong time for about a week!! Had a bit of a laugh at that one...... So off we went and hopped on the tourist bus with the barely working air conditioning. There was also a bunch of irish lads extremely drunk in the backseat, shouting and roaring and luckily for everyone on the bus they had an ipod with speakers, so everyone got a nice dose of IRA rebel songs Our fellow irishmen on the bus
Our fellow irishmen on the bus
 . I maintained my theory that they would conk out after an hour or two and luckily they did or I think they might have got beat up by some other very cranky looking tourists on the bus! So after the bus took off so did the money making schemes began. First our bus man took all our passports and got our visas en masse so he made $3 per tourist on that one. Then as we finally reached the border the air conditioning took a turn for the worse and everyone was passing out.  So it was time for the bus man to mention that it took like 6 hours from the cambodian border to Siem Reap and the buses and roads were crap but you could always get a taxi for 2000 baht each and it would only take like 3 hours. And that cambodia was a really poor country and there was no ATMS and accomodation was expensive and that he would give you a good exchange rate for your money (yeah right!) Thinking they were pulling the piss we decided to stick with the bus. Turns out the people who opted for taxis got there about 30 mins faster than us as they were stopped off at the restaurant as well!
Unpleasantries aside, the reason that we made this trek to Siem Reap was of course to visit Angkor, the famous hidden temples in the jungle. Definately one of the highlight of my Asia trip, as there are just tons of these temples all over the place. We spent two days exploring around. One day we took bikes much to the amusement of the locals as most tourists take a tuk tuk as its about 10km each way on an ancient, single gear bike.  Angkor is not that easy to find if you don't have a clue where you're going but the locals pointed us in the right direction. My favourite temples would have to be Bayonne or the overgrown Ta Phrom with these massive trees sprouting out of temples, really impressive. Ferg even found time to befriend some monkeys, deciding that a monkey on one's back was really the latest trend. I opted out, didn't really fancy getting bitten by one of these potentially rabid creatures!!  Got completely addicted to the men's wimbledon championship in Siem Reap, staying up to watch the final until some ridiculous hour. I did bail in the sixth set when the rain delay kicked in though. Was sure Federer would pull through, but Nadal somehow won it. Next stop Phnom Penh...........
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