Siem Reap

Good evening, although it feels a lot more like the middle of the night, such has been our sleeping/waking pattern over the past day or so. We woke up at 4am this morning to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise, and then explored that and the surrounding temples until about midday, before collapsing back into the tuk-tuk and returning to the town. The temples were mind-blowing and very impressive; sunrise wasn't as good as it could've been as it was cloudy, but seeing the morning light bathe the temple and a perfect reflection in the water in front of it was absolutely stunning. I have lots of pictures, but to be honest you'll do much better to just google image search "Angkor Wat" for an idea. We had a tuk-tuk driver taking us from place to place, although he wasn't the one we'd pre arranged the day before: upon arriving at the Siem Reap bus station, we found a tuk-tuk driver and agreed that we'd pay him 15 dollars to take us to our hotel then, and then to drive us around the next day, and even though we didn't pay him anything yesterday and he would've had a guaranteed job today, he didn't turn up! We waited about 20 mins and then decided that we'd miss the sunrise if we didn't leave soon - so we found another driver, who agreed on 10 dollars for the day and ended up being really nice, like at one point during the intermittent torrential rain, we'd hopped out of the tuk-tuk to use the toilets, and then the rain started again, so he came to find us (about a minute-long walk in the driving rain) with two umbrellas so we could get back to the tuk-tuk in relative comfort :D

There was one incident/altercation when we were sitting across the lake/big puddle from Angkor Wat at about 6am with all the other tourists (there are SO MANY JAPANESE TOURISTS HERE, HOW DO THEY ALL AFFORD IT?!!?) sitting on red plastic chairs, and the stall-holders were flogging their wares (from the moment you leave your tuk-tuk at the entrance to all the temples, you're accosted by people offering LADY YOU WANT BRACELET? I HAVE COLD DRINK JUST ONE DOLLAR. YOU LIKE T-SHIRT? and one of the stall-holders came over and tried to get us to go to his food stall, just the usual until he said that his stall was number 007 and his name was James Bond. I'm not really a film-afficionado but I didn't recognise him: but then again I've only seen the Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery films so what do I know. Anyway, he kept insisting that since we were sitting on 'his' chairs, we had to buy a coffee from him. We went to a different stall when we did eventually want breakfast (one where they hadn't tried to tout us and where no-one else was sitting; they're all offering exactly the same food for exactly the same price and I wanted to discourage hassly selling), we found that all the stalls had EXACTLY THE SAME chairs! He still had a go at us on our way back past him, and insisted that we had lied and stolen the use of his chairs. Sigh.

Anyway, so temple exploration was fun, I enjoyed feeling like Indiana Jones and scaling perilously steep stone steps in the rain, and generally not understanding how they managed such amazing structures. But it got to about midday, we'd been up for 8 hours and it was enough.

Following that, we had some lunch at a place offering FREE FI-WI, and then ice-cream / sorbet. (Mark, I expect you at Heathrow on Tuesday evening with a HUGE tub of raspberry ripple). Ricky was going to get a fish massage (where you put your feet into a tank of fish who, apparently, enjoy nibbling the dead skin off your feet - although I don't know how the fish are able to communicate their culinary likes/dislikes to the proprietors), but ended up not due to rain and logistics, ie. came back to the hotel because of rain, and then didn't get changed and go out because we both fell asleep for several hours. So now, although it's only 7.30, it really feels like the middle of the night, and we're ready for sleep very soon, especially since we have a 4.30 start for the schlep back to Bangkok - not really looking forward to that, but it's overland schlep or expensive flight.

Siem Reap is nicer than you'd imagine, given it's just the town that houses the millions of visitors who flock to see the ancient temples. We're staying at a Burmese/Khmer guesthouse where the staff are super-super-nice and helpful and we've got our cheapest room yet, with the television that just keeps on giving. We've had a lot of animal programmes, including animal programmes with snakes/spiders that Ricky insists on watching even though he's deathly afraid of them - he's doing it right now!!

Anyway, to bed now I think. Hopefully the next time I update will be following a straightforward border-crossing and I will be non-stressed and generally serene and calm. Fingers crossed!

Lots of love,

Louise xxx