Angkor Wat

After 8 hours sat on the bus next to a smelly man mountain who crushed me into the window, I was very glad to finally get to Siem Reap and after I'd dumped my stuff I went out to meet Lizi and Annie who had also just arrived.

Siem Reap is a the nearest town to Angkor Wat (the largest religious building in the world I found out!) so it's a really busy town with loads of different nationalities passing through for a few days to see the temples. It wasn't something that was on my list of things to do here - I didn't really know much about it - but as I ended up in Cambodia I thought I would. And I'm glad I did - it's stunning.


The temple complex is huge and a lot of it is in ruins. But it's vast. We spent a good 4-5 hours there and saw 4 or 5 temples including the main one, but you can buy a 3 day pass if you really want to explore it. Some of Tomb Raider was filmed there apparently and it had a real Indiana Jones feel about. it.

Of course there were thousands of tourists, but because it's so large you can just walk off into the surroundings and explore the rubble with no tourists about. The crickets in the trees created this eerie screeching sound that followed you around and there were little sound pockets where the acoustics made it really loud.





The only thing that took away from it were the people trying to sell you stuff. One of the main differences between Thailand and Cambodia is pushiness. The Thais were rarely pushy and always respected a 'no thank you' with a smile.

Cambodians are pushy to the point where you want to swear at them.
'Buy something sir?'
'No thanks'
'T-shirt sir?'
'No thank you'
'Çold water sir?.
'Got some thanks.'
'Postcard sir?'
'No thanks'
'Tuk tuk sir?'
Í'm already in a f****ing a tuk-tuk'


And on, and on, and on...


Note: I haven't actually sworn at a Cambodian yet.