Cambodia - Siem Riep and Angkor Wat

We arrived in Cambodia via minibus for 4 hours, which brought us to the border. After a very sketchy visa process in which I trusted no one and hoped the girl on the scooter taking my passport to the embassy for me would come back, we crossed into Cambodia and were told that the rest of the bus would take 10 hours, or we could take a taxi for 2 hours and $70. We got the taxi. Later we found out that of course they lied and the bus was only about 5 hours. What's done is done.

But what a beautiful country! The drive into Siem Riep was gorgeous. There were lots of scooters with little baby pigs in cages riding on the back. The town is very cute and far more developed than I expected. The architecture is very french and there are massive hotels everywhere. There is also Korean everywhere: restaurants, hotels, shops. I think that Koreans invest overseas heavily, and this is one of the places. Anyway, this is the city where the Angkor Wat temples are.

We bought a 3 day pass. The first day we rented bikes and we ran into Dale at the ticket booth. The bikes were fun, except mine had 2 flat tires so it was really hard to ride, obviously. We saw the main temple and then rode on to Bayon, the one with all the faces. Its all absolutely amazing and humbling to see.

The rest of the time here we took tuk tuks back and forth to all the different temples, of which there are over 1000. My favourite temple was the one with trees growing over the walls and that are covering the entire temple. It was like being on a movie set, hard to believe that it is all real and over 900 years old. Unfortunately I got really sick in Siem Riep, probably some mild food poisoning, so I was rushing to find a bathroom most of the time.

It was great to be with Dale again, although we'd only been apart for about 3 days. We all partied at a pub in SR together on Dale's last night. It was like being in Korea all over again. Dale is going back to Thailand after this and then home to Halifax in the middle of October.

The nice thing about Cambodia and its tourism is that it seems to be very socially conscious. There are banners everywhere about the benefits of tourism for impoverished countries and communities. The downside is that the hassling from the children is horrific. We try not to buy anything from kids because it encourages them to keep selling things, like books and souvenirs, on the streets and then not go to school. But these kids are awful! They want to know our names and then call after us when we don't buy anything. One kid even called Leesa a liar because she didn't buy water from him. Get a life, kid. The morning I went to Angkor Wat for sunrise, I went to the bathroom and a small boy, about 5 years old, followed me there asking for money. I said no the whole time and when I got to the bathroom stall, he put all his weight on the door to stop me from closing it, yelling "pay me! pay me!". I had to physically push him away. He was an aweful kid.

I spent a lot of time in bed being sick when I wasn't out seeing the temples. I watched a lot of BBC news and the discovery channel. I didn't have TV in Korea either so I am getting my fix. I'm also very sweaty all the time and have a really gross heat rash.