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After a long and tedious journey from Thailand into Cambodia (it took 9 hours to travel 400km!) we finally made it to Siem Reap, the gateway to the fabulous Angkor Wat temples. Angkor means 'Holy City', and it is a huge archeological site with temples that date back to 802AD. We paid a man with a tuktuk to drive us around the site (as the temples were quite far apart) and he picked us up at 5am in time for the sunrise. It rose just behind the main temple, Angkor Wat, and it was a spectacular sight. The details carved into the buildings were amazing, and when the 'city' was in use back in 802AD, it is thought to have been the best built living area in the world. We saw the 5 main temples, even though there are near to 100, but really they all look quite similar. It reminded us both of The Jungle Book, with trees growing over the ruins! We then went back to Siam Reap for the night, visited the night markets, ate at the local stalls, and drank the 30p beer! 2 nights was plenty in touristy Siem Reap, and we made our way on the 6 hour bus to the capital, Phnom Penh.
In the capital, Phnom Penh, we were greeted by 20 tuktuk drivers all fighting for our business (we found them to be the most annoying thing about Cambodia, we literally couldn't take 2 steps without being asked where we were going and did we need a ride, one even came up to our hotel room!). We quickly found a room within our budget (3pounds per night!) and set out to find the 'French Quarter' which our Rough Guide book made out to be quite nice. It wasn't! We weren't very impressed with the city as it is obvious that it revolves around tourists, so a small area is dedicated to tours and restaurants etc, then everywhere else was extremely poor so we felt a bit uncomfortable in some areas. We did find a brilliant little restauarant though, called the Foreign Correspondence Club (FCC) which served a fusion of Cambodian and Chinese cuisine, so we treated ourselves to a nice meal there! We decided to quickly move on once our Vietnamese visas had been processed, and we got the 6 hour bus to Ho Chi Minh City the next day, in hope that Vietnam would be less negatively affected by tourism....
P.S. Since we wrote this, we have met lots of people who loved Cambodia, and we think that unfortunately we just saw the bad bits in the few days we were there!
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