Siem Reap #2

We had heard about the notorious boarder crossing from Thailand into Cambodia at Poipet.  Luckily we didn't fall for our mini bus drivers offer of doing our visas super quick to save us waiting two hours at the boarder.  We did the visas on our own at the boarder, not paying any extra to our driver, and we were through quicker than those that paid the driver for 'super quick' visas.  

We arrived late afternoon into Siem Reap so we checked into our hotel and then walked into town.  We immediately found pub street and The Alley are where all the restaurants are - good find.

The next day we did a city walk and in the afternoon we chilled out by the hotel pool.  Perhaps our biggest mistake of the trip so far - in hindsight we should have visited Angkor War this day as the weather was lovely, but as we were up early the previous morning we thought we would have a sleep in and take it easy.

The big one - the visit to Angkor Wat.  We were up ridiculously early at 4:50am which didn't impress me! Our pre arranged driver wasn't waiting for us out front of the hotel and we noticed it was spitting with rain.  We negotiated a price with another driver and on our way to the temples it started bucketing down.  We thought it would be a lot of rain but over very quickly.  We were wrong.  It was a lot of rain over a long period of time.  We sat in the tuktuk waiting for the rain to stop but when it was evident it wasn't stopping anytime soon we just had to bite the bullet and get out to visit Angkor War.  We dressed ourselves with rain jackets, a poncho and an umbrella and still we were soaking wet! On the plus side the rain kept the majority of sane people away.  As there was no sun to rise the temple was dark and very eerie to walk through.  Angkor Wat was actually a bit smaller than we had imagined.  

Our second temple of the day was my favourite - Ta Phrom.  It had massive tree roots that had over grown the temple and it was fun climbing over tree roots and splashing through muddy puddles.  

The last temple on our visit was Bayon. This was my least favourite as by then the rain had stopped so the tourist buses had begun rolling up packed full of camera wielding tourists.  Also, this temple was the smallest so it just wasn't on the same scale as Angkor Wat or Ta Phrom. 

After the temple visits it was time to head back to The Alley for breakfast/brunch/lunch and then the hotel for a much needed and deserved nana nap.  We managed another walk into town for dinner where we ate Cambodian BBQ foods. The next day was an early start for the bus to a Phnom Penh so we had an early night.