Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
"WHY DOES IT ALWAYS RAIN ON ME..."
So up we get at ridiculous o'clock to go see this miraculous sunrise at one of the biggest, best religious sites in the world - and it was...CRAP! We got up at 4.15am, got ready and went our to meet our friendly tuk tuk driver - Mam. (He was awesome! - We think he may have had some leaning difficulties but he was cool!) We arrived at the ticket booths, got our day passes - which have fairly ravishing pictures of us on them! - and then had to wait for it to open. We had another little drive through lots of bugs to get to the actual Wat and once we'd stopped it was still pitch black and raining, so as we got out we stepped into a nice big puddle of mud! The day was starting well! We then had a nice walk over some wobbley cobbles to get to a good spot to see the sun rise. It was still very very dark and we had forgotten our torch so it was a bit of an obsticle course just to get across the moat. When we'd finally made our way through all of the korean tourists and found a nice spot the heavens opened andit started pouring down with rain! Luckily our amazing tuk tuk driver had given us an umbrella so we got just wet insead of drenched! Fun times!
Once the 'sun' had risen (we couldn't see the sun as it was so cloudy and rainy!) and it was light we made our way to actually look around Angkor Wat. As we walked towards the main structure a random monkey jumped out and pretty much scared the crap out of us! That was probably the most exciement we had there! Despite being wet and exhausted, we went for a look around and were bored after about 10 minues! - It all looked exactly the same! We saw some families with fairly young chidren also looking around and when we got closer realised they were engish! (Why on earth you'd drag a couple of kids half way across the world to see something like that at 5 am, we have no idea!) But the snotty mother did supply us with the quote of the day..."Angkor Wat is very special because it's very big and very old." It does kind of sum it up!
After about an hour of looking around we decide to leave and head over to one of the other temples. First we needed to locate Mam. Ths was a task and a half - we probably spent more time looking for him than we did looking around Angkor Wat! Once we'd finaly found him, he was having a little snooze in the back of his tuk tuk so we had to wake him up! He was possibly still a little sleepy as when we set off towards he next temple we had a little crash! We initially thought this was hilarious! We got out of the tuk uk to assess te damage and noticed that poor Mam had broken his motor bike. We thought that this might cause a premature end to our temple activity for the day, however Mam managed to fix it and off we went!
We went to Angkor Thom which actually used to be a city. Right in the middle is a temple called Bayon which was actually way more interesting than Angkor Wat. There are huge creepy faces everywhere, all over the buiding which is kind of falling down a bit and everywhere is carved in great detail. After looking around we headed to the next part but were stopped in our tracks. There were police everywhere and we were told that part of the vicinity was closed off as the king was coming to visit. We found a spot to sit and watch from afar as the king passed through. By this time we were absolutely exhausted and so decided that it was time to head back to the hotel fo breakfast and a nap. On our way to find Mam we saw elephants! Sammy was very excied!
Back at the hotel, we had breakfast and then went for a swim as we were mega sweaty from all of the looking at temples! After that it was time for a nap - best thing EVER! When we woke up we headed back towards Angkor to go on the hot air balloon. On our way there it started to rain AGAIN! Mam stopped the tuk tuk to pull all of the waterproof sheets down but we told him we were ok, the rain wasn't heavy and it was quite refreshing in the heat. 30 seconds later it began to poor it down so poor Mam got drenched pulling the sheets down for us. When we go to the balloon it was closed because of the weather! HUH! We went to one of the jungle temples, Ta Prohm instead.
Ta Prohm was by far the most interesting temple of all. it was in the middle of nowhere and most of it had fallen down and decayed. There were trees growing all over it with their roots taking over entire sections. The only annoying thing was that there was only one way in and out and there were children following you out saying "lady, lady...you wan buy postcard? Ten for dollar! Lady, LADY! You buy bracelet. Three for dollar!" I gets annoying when they literally chase you down the path!
That evening we wen for a nice meal at the Angkor FCC and had a pretty early night!
The next day we got up and went to see if the balloon was flying. It wasn't! GRRR....! We were beginning to wonder if the thing ever flew! We headed back to town for lunch and a little shopping in the market. It was soo...hot looking around and we got a bit sick of people trying to sell us stuff so we headed to a local cafe for frozen daquiris! They were so good! Once we'd cooled down we went back to do a little more shopping.
That evenng we went for a really fancy meal at a 5* hotel and watched some apsara dancing. It was interesting but a little boring after a while. That was our culture bit for the day! After that we went to pub street for some drinks and found a bar that sold some pretty decent wine. We sat and savoured drinking the bottle as we had been craving wine for a couple of days! We then went to have the fish foot thing done. We took our shoes off and put our feet in the tank wth the small fish. Sammy was loving it but Rach totally freaked out ("I don't like fish ok?!") It was really really wierd! While sitting there the Cambodian lady nudged Rach's boob saying "You big size, me very small size!" - Also, very strange!
We ended up in a bar called Angkor What? which was an experience! It was exactly like a bar at home! It was full of westerners and played chart music which we danced to like fools! We had our first bucket of cocktail here and had a couple of frozen margaritas! They were awesome! We also met a girl from Hazel Grove in there - small world!
After a late night we got up pretty early for breakfast and went t see if the balloon was open again! Third time lucky! It wasn't! GRRRR.....! We were REALLY pissed off! Feeling grumpy we went back to the hotel to finish packing and wait for our bus to Phnom Penh...
- comments