Angkor Wat is Cambodia and Cambodia is Angkor Wat. The Angkor silhouette is everywhere in this country: on soldiers’ uniforms, on the flag and of course on every tourist’s T-shirt including Amie’s and mine. It is the jewel in the crown of Cambodia and probably of all Southeast Asia. It was the one thing that Amie and I both agreed could not be missed on this adventure.

I must start with the story of getting off the bus in Siem Reap (the main town near Angkor Wat).The bus pulled to a stop and suddenly guys started charging the bus, waving signs for rides into town. As soon as we got off the bus we were surrounded by about 20 guys all offering a ride to our hotel. Amie went in search of our bags as I stood there laughing at the scene of chaos. I picked one guy but the others were not giving up without a fight and they kept trying to get my attention. Amie came barging through the mob with both bags over her back and marched to the vehicle we had chosen. The ride to our hotel was free because the main reason for the commotion was that they were trying to get us to do the tour of the temples with them the following day. The going rate for a driver and transportation is $10 - $15 for a full day and this is a lot more than a civil servant earns in a week so competition is pretty fierce. We settled on a price and pick up time for the following day and walked around the town. The next morning a new guy was waiting for us, a "friend" of the guy from yesterday and we headed for the temples in a motorbike carriage. We spent from 8am until after sunset exploring about 10 different temples.

We started the day by driving by the outer walls of Angkor Wat to the South Gate of the Bayon which has this bridge with all the gods and demons playing tug-of-war with large serpents. Then we went to the Bayon itself which is really cool with all these faces on all the walls so it feels as if you are been watched the whole time. We walked around for miles and this was just one part. We then drove through these country roads that made us feel we were in New England to Preah Khan and then to Neak Pean before stopping for lunch at Pre Rup. The temples look as if they came out of an Indiana Jones movie and in fact some of the temples were used in Tomb Raider. Every time we would stop people would start shouting “something to eat Sir, cold water to drink Madame?” I’ve never said no thank you so many times in my life.

At lunch the kids would be set on the tourists trying to sell all kinds of stuff from postcards to flutes etc. The kids were so sweet but very smart and they would ask you what country you came from and then give you all this information about your home country. They only had information about countries that have a lot of tourists as we found out when we quizzed them about countries like Russia. One kid was selling bamboo stars and I had no idea what they were for, but he informed me they were Christmas tree decorations. I just had to buy one, but the kid was selling 4 for a dollar and did not want to just sell one. Eventually he sold me one for 700 riel (17 cents) because it was all the change I had.

After lunch we went to see more temples and some were really amazing as they had trees growing out of every crack. It started to get late so we headed for Angkor Wat where we met this English girl Holly whom we had met in Kampot and then again in Phnom Penh. Angkor was great but we only had one hour to look around before we had to make the grueling climb up Phnom Bakheng to view the sunset, which was hazy.

I brought a pedometer with me on this trip to see how much we walk each day, and even though we went from temple to temple in a moto we walked over 18,000 steps or 10 miles. Most of these were up and down stairs so we felt each one. The only other day I walked so much was the day I walked to the Waterfall in Ko Chang unless you count the ride up to Boker Hill, but I think most of those steps were registered in the back of the pickup truck. Compare this to our worst day of just over 1000 steps the day after visiting the waterfall in Ko Chang while suffering a pretty bad hangover.

We arranged with our driver to pick us up at 5 am the following morning as we were going to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat but he never showed, so at 5.30 am we walked into town and got a ride to Angkor just in time for the sunrise which once again was nothing special. We decided to walk around the outside of the temple to see the reliefs (amazing details all carved in stone). It was so quiet it was amazing as there were thousands of tourists watching the sunrise but very few of them decided to explore Angkor itself as the guidebooks suggest you wait until afternoon for the best light. Amie and I nearly had the place to ourselves and spent a few hours walking around before heading back to our hotel for breakfast and a well earned nap.

Pictures of ruins and more ruins.

Siem Reap (Khmer for “Siam Defeated”)

Siem Reap is like Bangkok in that you can’t walk down the street without some guy shouting “tuk tuk!” It’s really frustrating when you’re trying to cross the street and there is a break in the traffic but suddenly a tuk tuk blocks your way hoping you’ll ride with him. There are so many western restaurants here, even an Irish pub with the cleanest bathroom I’ve seen since home. Another thing that Siem Reap has a lot of is beggars. There are so many of them, men and women of all ages and a lot of them have limbs missing. Land mine victims no doubt. The town is very quiet by day since most of the tourists are at the temples except for Amie and me, who got tired of the temples after two days. We decided to take it easy today with a little walk around town and a visit to the Butterfly Garden (for the record, it was Amie's idea). Overall, Siem Reap is not a bad town and if you come to visit Angkor Wat it's worth spending a day looking around the city. The only bad thing is that the prices are closer to home than other parts of Southeast Asia.