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We traveled from the island of Ko Chang on Friday to Aranyaprathet, which is the Thai border town where you can cross into Cambodia to the town of Poipet. We decided to get to the border the night before we wanted to cross so that we could do it early in the morning and thus leaves us with the whole day to travel to the town that we wanted to stay in. Crossing the border was an interesting experience as there were people everywhere and a lot of shady characters waiting to help you part with money! Luckily we met up with two Swedish girls, Anna and Linda on the bus to Aranyaprathet and we all ended up going to the same hotel and then we organized transport to the border and then onward transport in Cambodia using their guidebook. It took about an hour to get through because the girls didn't have visas so they had to get them which took some time and the que's were really long.
The road from the border to the town of Siem Reap is the worst road I have ever seen. It was for the most part just compacted dirt with occasional stretches of broken and damaged tarmac. It's only 150km from the border to the town but takes three hours to travel it. The rumor is that a Thai airline is paying off government officials to leave the road until last for resurfacing so that more people will fly from Bangkok rather than do the much cheaper road journey. It was hell of an adventure though!
On Sunday morning we got up really early and went to visit the temple of Angkor Wat. It's the largest religious building in the world and is a really important historical site as it shows the many different styles of Khmer architecture. It was the best place we have visited so far! The temple is huge and is surrounded by a moat that just massive. It was brilliant and I can't wait to visit the other temples that are in the area. We've visited most of the main temples in the area, on Monday hiring bikes to see them. We cycled over 10 miles in total yesterday following the little tour around the temples. The temples are set out in such a way that two tour routes have developed the big route which is 26km and the little route which is 17km. We dread to think what the big route is like!
We also went back to Angkor Wat again on Monday to catch the sunset and we took some great photographs despite the thousands of Japanese tourists climbing over everything!It is much hotter here than in Thailand, at least 35 degrees most days and because it is inland it's very dry. The evenings are nice though and the town has plenty of places to eat. We had food at a place last night that served the meals in hollowed out coconut shells! The food is excellent especially their national dish amoc which is like a stew with coconut and vegetables and normally fish although you can have chicken or just plain vegetables. It is also very cheap here. The first night we went out for food with the Swedish girls and our half of the bill came to just $15 for two meals with rice, three beers and a coke. That's just seven pounds!!
On Friday we are leaving to go to Battambang where we plan to stay for a few days.After this we are heading to Sihanoukville which has some great beaches and cool little tropical islands and we are hoping to meet up with Anna and Linda there.
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