Adam and Alice's Round The World adventures: Angkor What?????

After a night stop in Bangkok the next morning we headed to the Thai/Cambodia border. We had heard horror stories of pickpockets,long queues and scams. Luckily for us we managed to skip the scams and pay the correct 20dollars to the officials to enter Cambodia. We also met up with a french girl and shared the cost of a taxi to Some reap. We arrived at our hostel which was very cheap and friendly but unfortunately had a bit of a cockroach problem. However the free breakfast was nice and they offered lots of help with transport etc. Some reap is the home of Angkor Wat, the biggest religious building in the world and one of the modern 8wonders of the world. We decided to be a 3 day ticket so that we could visit lots of temples and build up to Angkor Wat on our last day. On our first day we took a tuk tuk to visit the smaller temples, some of which are a bit further out. They were really interesting and fun to explore.

The next day we decided to have a relaxed day and just pottered around the hostel and the town ( our ticket was valid for a whole week) For dinner we had a traditional Cambodian BBQ and tried crocodile which was like a fishy chicken!! We also visited the very well named pub street. It' similar to the Khao San Road of Bangkok but a lot nicer!

The following day we hired bikes and set off to visit some more temples including what is known as the Tomb raider temple as it was featured in one of the Lara croft films. The bike ride was really fun and the temples were incredible .On a couple of the temples there was some serious climbing to be done and it was more like rock climbing than climbing stairs! It showed how strong the trees were as them growing over and around the temple was tearing the temple apart. I felt like we were in some form of adventure film!We also saw at the temple a band playing traditional Cambodian instruments to raise money for landmine victims. They themselves had the horrific injuries which comes from stepping on one.

On our final day of temples we headed out at 5am to catch sunset over AW. It was very beautiful and stunning but it seemed smaller to both of us than we had imagined. It was lovely and cool and nice to walk around. We also watched the young monks and nuns praying at this holy site. After sunrise we headed to Angkor Thom to look at some more temples including the elephant temple. They were all pretty fantastic and each different. With all the carvings you could easily imagine that the temples must have been terrifying to the peasant population.

After a morning of temples we headed into town and went to the vegetarian Ghekkho cafe for a cooking class. We learn how to make Cambodian spring rolls and dipping sauce, a green papaya salad and a tofu amok curry. All were absolutely delicious. And we had a very enjoyable lunch!