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Saturday
Was supposed to have been picked up for our tour at 8 but they ended up being 45 mins late so the whole day did feel a bit rushed.
Our first temple was Angkor Bayon then Angkar Prohm.
I really like Angkar Prohm as this one was abandoned for a couple of hundred years so the jungle is reclaiming it with the massive old trees and giant root system that is slowly destroying and knocking the temple down . The guide says they are discussing what to do - whether the chop the roots or not . The roots are what makes this place but I can see why they would be torn what to do.
Also at this Angkor Angelina Jolie filmed Tomb Raider apparently . I've never seen it so I'll take his word on it. There is famous tree in the movie that everyone was getting their photo taken in front of too.
After visiting this Angkar we were taken to a restaurant for lunch. Was the most expensive place we have been to anywhere -$2 for a can of coke - more than what we pay at home and the cans are smaller.
We have found Cambodia to be much more expensive for everything really compared to Vietnam as everything gets rounded up to the US dollar. Even when it's not and its part of a dollar they give the change in local currency which is worthless outside of Cambodia so everyone just usually gives that back as a tip so they make money from that too.
Anyway after lunch we headed to Angkar Wat which is the main tourist attraction for Siem Reep. It is a huge sure and spectacular though we felt quite rushed keeping up with the guide especially when we know we had already lost people through the day and they don't wait for anyone.
We did get a good bit of history from the guide which was great to know as visited all the places though - as long we kept up the pace with him.
We spent a good few hours at Wat before we headed to the last temple on a hill to watch the sunset. We got to the entrance at 5.15 and nearly had to run over a kilometre up a hill on a gravel road to join the other thousand people with the same idea. We were stuffed by the time we got there - the fate to the viewing area closed at 5.30 and walked in at 5.29!!
It was basically a massive s*** fight and a waste of time really . We then had to fight our way back down or risk being abandoned by the tour. Lucky we were the last to come back down but they waited for us before we had the slow drive out of there.
We normally had been tipping each of our guides but we made our mind up this guy was getting nothing. In fact we didn't see anyone tipping him!
We were so glad to get home as the humidity is a killer here and we are drinking litres of water each day as we are just soaked in sweat constantly .
We ended up having dinner at the hotel restaurant which was really nice and quite reasonable before heading to our room and a much needed shower and bed
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