Oooooh...two blogs within a week....that's the rainy season for you! No, actually the weather has been fine, too hot if anything. The reason for another blog in such quick succession is that the temples of Angkor are just SO amazing that they warrant a mention of their own.
What we did not realise is that there are hundreds of temples in Siem Riep province, as all you ever really hear about is Angkor Wat. The most famous of the temples, it is indeed the largest and has the most impressive carvings. However our favourite was one called Bayon, which was something straight out of an adventure story. From a distance it looked like a pile of stones, but up close giant faces looked out of every tower to face north, south, east and west.
Another temple that is very famous, is the one that is shown in Tomb Raider, Ta Phrom. This temple was purposely left to the jungles devices to show what some of the temples would have looked like on discovery, and just how effective the jungle is at dismantling the work of man. It is a completely magical place, with enormous cotton and fig trees engulfing the ruins. In fact the trees are actually holding the ruins up. Beautiful.
We also visited temples further out of town, which involved getting covered in red dust as trucks overtook our tuk-tuk for the 45km journey out of town. It was worth the trip in the heat and dirt but we were very glad to get in the shower after that one.
The Cambodian people are fantastic and after all they have been through it is inspiring to see their smiling faces. People are very poor here and you are constantly bombarded by children selling postcards, books, flutes and drinks. "Lady, mister you want postcard! ten for one dollar. one, two, three, four.......etc" they then name all the temples on the postcards. They can count in numerous languages and have some patter for you depending on where you come from. One amazing boy gave us the populations and prime ministers of the UK and Australia, including the previous PM's. It is very sad as you wish you could buy something from all of them, but it is just not possible. If we had a dollar for everytime someone asked us for a dollar.......
Anyway, Cambodia is definitely somewhere we would come back to. We leave tomorrow morning for Bangkok and then on to hit some beaches. Lovely as it is here, it is stinking hot and we need a swim badly. Unfortunately, this means giving Laos a miss this time, but as we feel we would revisit Cambodia, we will add that to the to do list.
Only 4 weeks to go till Australia beckons! xRaina and Will
