Ancient Cambodge and the Temples of Angkor
Trip Start
Oct 12, 2008
1
10
17
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Monday, March 30, 2009
Bit behind on the photo's so thought we'd try upload some more, these are ones just after Laos, travelling through Cambodia, the capital Phnom Penh, and Siem Reap. Looks like we forgot to take many photo's here, but there's lots of posing next to various ancient temples of Angkor, and a couple of lovely monkey snaps too...
Heading out of Laos PDR, the bus to border was nice and straightforward, and the border land crossing went rather smooth, after a couple of ex gratia 'weekend' payments to the border (beer tax more likely...)
Over the border and back onto a bus, now heading to Phnom Penh. Till this point we'd luckily avoided any major travel probs but it seemed our luck was soon about to run out.
20 minutes into the estimated 7 hour journey time, when we made the first of our many unscheduled stops - seems our 'VIP' bus wasn't quite so plush afterall - 4 unscheduled stops, one dodgy back axle and 2 replaced wheels later we arrive just 6 hours late... oh, and it seems only fair to mention, this fell on the 14th February. Yup, my valentines day treat to Bex consists of a ridculously late journey on a hot sweaty bus, getting stuck numerous times in the back end of civilisation, and a romantic feast of stale baguettes and warm dairy-lea triangles .... yup, very smooth, I know...
Phnom penh was actually great fun, after roughing it for a week or two we gave the capital of cambodia the full ex-pat treatment - long forgotten treats such as proper beefburgers, club sandwiches, mixed cocktails, and a day or two spent lounging beside lovely swimming pools, we even squeezed in a trip to a swish gym/fitness centre place - not exactly 'Cambodian', but fun nontheless.
After Phnom penh we headed west to spend a couple of days in Siem Reap to visit the ruined temples
of Angkor. Long established as a 'must-see' in Asia, the ancient Khmer buildings, monuments and temples with their carved 'smiling' Buddha faces are beautiful, we made the healthy (foolish) decision to cycle around the temples, our rusty 70's style hired bike's and some proper scorchio weather made the 30km loop pretty hard going, but then I spotted a picture of a monkey with a really fat belly, so things turned out ok.
I've just checked the camera and it seems we took hardly any non-templey pics whilst in Cambodge (see same white / blue t-shirt in nearly all photo's), so to balance things out, we've stuck in a fat monkey pic as our way of apologising... Next we head back to Ting Tong Thailand, for less culture and more time bumming it on the beach!
Hope y'all are keeping fine and dandy,
Davey & Bex xxx
