Monday 19 May 2008

The Amazing Temples of Angkor - Angkor Wat and Bayon










Siem Reap Cambodia
Very impressed with this little town. Lots of cheap tuk tuks to whizz you around, lots of fish amok dinners for a few dollars. Everyone accepted dollars rather than handfulls of ria and it's close to the temples of Angkor. This is like a huge national park with 50? temples dotted all over the place. Each one is like an ancient ruined city of pyramid and the surrounding forest sets it off perfectly. The soil is very sandy so it looks like the New Forest..with the odd palm tree and elephant. I particularly like the ruins that have been crushed by massive 800 year old trees that have grown into the stone walls and roofs.They look like scary images from a Grimms Fairy tale book. Not that I still have any...
Good things
Exploring temples surrounded by ancient forests Indian Jones style.
Blind masseurs although they kept banging into things. I kept making faux pas by speaking loudly or moving around silently so they couldn't find me. I even mentioned that I would take the red basket rather than the blue one as if that helped them with anything.
Mopeds whizzing around with a whole dead pig on the back with its feet in the air
Nice weather for exploring with predictable torrential rain at 2pm
Watching the FA cup final in a tin shack and trying to explain who Portmouth were to the Cambodians.
Being delivered to the international airport in the back of a tuk tuk
Bad things
Taxi driver driving at 10mph trying to sell us tours. He said it was his first day as a taxi driver. Not sure that he had ever driven before. Even the chickens overtook us on the way to town.Lost hat. Bought another hat. Found old hat.Walking at night through huge puddles in the sand. Completely dark - no street lights. Only the sound of me sliding a flip flop into the cold ooze.Being charged 20US for a visa and then 25US to leaveInternet slow so no pictures on the blog for a while