19/9/06 we have spent that last few days amongst the ankor runins and the resturants, bars and markets of Siem Reap. . Ankor wat was pretty awsome, lightning struck behind it as we walked towards, at the back of the temple monkies climbed over the ruins, and if you go there at the hotest point in the day theres hardly anyone there, we stayed until sunset and the spires light up like candels. Ankor thom was a lot better, we got up early to see the sun rise at ankor wat to find it full of japanise people... I think they must have some kind of ankor package where they fly to siem reap from japan to see the temples in a day and then return- but the other temples were quiet and the only people there at 6am were some begging children, a khmer student who asked to talk to us in order to improve her english and a few other people. The bayor is most definitly Orwelleian, I know nothing about the Khmer Civilisation but im sure the heads were devised as a 13th century big brother. Children followed us as we walked around, two of them devised an ingeniuos plan of staging an accident. The naked boy who must have been only 2 and a half followed the girl of 5ish in trying to climb down from a high part of the ruins, the girl reached up to him but it was too high...we contemplated helping him down but then walked around the corner to see what happened and there was a fake scream, it is amazing that these kids learn begging tactics like this from such a young age. Tuk tuks are expencive from town to the temples even if you haggle the price down, we rented montain bikes yesterday for a dollar each but the temples were further than we thought and it started to rain, lucys pratically fell apart so I had to put her and the bike on a tuk tuk and meet her back in town to get it exchanged. When we finally got at the gates to ankor thom a thunder storm broke out. It was the heavest rain I have ever witnessed, twice as hard as the rain in bangkok...everything got drenched the marshes at the sides of the roads turned lagoons and rivers of mud formed running down from the gates into them...a puddle formed in the bottom of lucys bag and scrampled the insides of her ipod. We arrived home after a long and unpleasent bike ride drenced and covered in mud. The bags may be water proof but they are not monsoon proof...luckily but too late for lucy;s ipod backpack covers were avalible in the Siem Reap markets. The city of Ankor thom is protected by a huge wall which today we found out you could walk along- over the jungle areas, the wildlife is amazing- monkies play in the shallow marshes, when the rain fell the sound of the toads was deafening, there are gynourmous red ants and giant beetles and the bird calls sound prehistoric, the rain got so bad today that we had to turn back...by the time we got back to the guest house the streets we flooded, the rain has finnally died down and we managed to get to this internet cafe tonight.