Angkor, wha?

And on to Siem Reap! For those not in the know, Siem Reap is the entrance town to the remarkable Angkor Wat. Or more correctly, the entrance town to the loads and loads of old Khmer temples and cities (of which Angkor Wat is the most spectacular) that litter the jungle around here.

A local sits in a window at Ta Prhom

It's hard to describe these ruins. They're truely spectacular in scale and when this place was in its prime (from 9th Century AD to 12th Century) the place must have been awesome. Siem Reap as a town exists purely to hold tourists and tour guides for the many many temples that lie ruined further north - not that it's a bad town at all.  It's a perfectly wonderful place to kick back after a day's hiking. We organised our tuk tuk driver for two days of tomb raiding and set off.

A monk smiles at Angkor Wat

I won't go into the details of each of the individual temples we visited because unless you've been here it's pretty pointless. In total, over 3 days we hiked around 14 or 15 different ruin sites. Most are in close proximity to one another but some (like Kbal Spean up a mountain hike and Bantey Srei down a long dirt road) take a bit more time to get to. And the bumpy ride in a tuk tuk is worth it to see the traditional villages and happy waving kids along the way.

Angkor Wat is everything everyone has every said it was. It's spectacular and beautiful. The approach to it is fantastic as you wander down a long causeway towards the huge temple complex. Of course, the skies opened up when we were walking up to so it was fairly wet, if fun, progress. Inside is remarkably well preserved, with little dark corridors and the most incredible inscriptions and carvings on the walls.

A nun accepting alms for Buddha - Thommanon

I think we fell for the more run down ruins though. Some are fairly over-run with jungle like the famous Ta Phrom (famous for Angelina Jolie tomb raiding around it) which has massive trees bulging out of old ruins and old chambers half covered in vine that have fallen into complete ruin and been taken over by the jungle. Very picturesque and lovely.

And Bayon temple is fascinating with its giant friendly faces looking down on you from every direction. Anyway, 1000 photos later (I'm not kidding) and being fairly knackered from 3 days of hiking around in fairly punishing heat, we took to our hotel pool and discovered a big leaving party for an old manager, Bruno from Norway. Needless to say karaoke happened. We also met a wonderful, if nutty, Russian couple (Rustov and Olga) and a Japanese casanova called Hiro, who had trouble getting into Cambodia as he didn't have any spare pages in his passport.  We felt sorry for him until he admitted that he'd been using his passport to collect girlies phone numbers! Funny thing is he spent some time in Rathfarnham - he hardly learnt that kind of behaviour there?! Great stuff!

Big head stone carving. Huge!

We rounded off our trip to see our friend Vannarith from the hotels little baby boy... My god that's one smiley child! It was lovely spending time with a local in his house. He's so proud of his little cute son, and rightly so.

We're leaving Cambodia soon, and it seems way too soon. The people here are fantastic. People wave and smile at you as you pass. They're eager to talk and say hello. They're completely genuine and lovely, never mind how hard they have had it, and do have it. Good luck to them because we've had a great time here.

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Take a look at all Paul's Siem Reap and Angkor photos (get a cup of tea, it could take a while...)

Boys just wanna have fun

Casanova Hiro and the mad Russians

Coming home in a downpour - cosy Tuk tuk!

Jungle over runs a ruin

Karaoke!

Love your smile

The famous towers of Angkor Wat

The ornate doorway at Bantey Srei

Vannarith and his lovely baby boy