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Firstly apologies because this is the longest blog I've done, but it does cover all of our final 4 days so bear with me (oh yeah and its interesting, I think). We arrived in Seam Reap having taken the cheapest bus option, and as I said the journey was absolutely fine and not only that, it included the tuk tuk ride when we got there to the main town! Maybe our luck was changing? We found a decent place to stay and arranged for the driver to do our Angkor tour, even though we could have got it for way cheaper if we'd searched around a bit, but Ben fell for his sop story about his hungry kids. Anyway we were going to get a 3-day Angkor pass of which one-day would include sunrise at 5 am. We thought we may as well get it out of the way seeing as we were probably going to chill the first night, so decided to do it the next day, with the driver returning to pick us up at 4 in the morning!! Seam Reap at first seemed a lot more quaint than Phnom Penh. It was a lot smaller and less industrialized and had more of a village feel. However that meant that all the tourists were closer together, mainly on pub street (nuff said) which made it seem a lot more lively. There was also many markets selling your usual souvenirs that we were going to have to frequent over the next few days for Christmas presents. But they were a lot less crowded than the usual markets we'd encountered in South East Asia so we could stroll around them a lot more leisurely which was good. One of the highlights of Seam Reap however had to be all the food stands on the main strip selling plentiful meals for just a dollar! Of course that meant me and Ben often had 2 meals a piece, purely because they were so cheap. As I said the first night we just chilled and got a feel for the place. We actually did go for a few drinks on pub street with some Swedish girls we had met all the way back in Laos, but still got to bed early. which made sleeping through the alarm and missing sunrise the next day all the more strange. Anyway Ben went down and apologised to the driver and they agreed that he would return at 9 to do a normal day at the temples and do sunrise the following day. Not a great start. So a couple of hours later we got up and did our first day at the temples, the first of course being Angkor Wat itself. It is indeed very impressive, and absolutely massive so again we took our usual overabundance of what we thought were very artsy photos. But it really was an amazing piece of architecture and I'm glad we saw it at the beginning, before we got truly numbed to temples by the end. After that it was another one of the most popular temples that I can't remember the name, but basically the one where Tomb Raider was filmed. It was a lot more ruined than Angkor Wat but that characterised it in terms of all the large roots and trees intertwining amongst the structures. Again pretty incredible. After that followed many more temples which although undeniably remarkable began to follow a familiar pattern and we began to wonder why we had decided to get the 3-day pass. Still we stayed for sunset at one of the temples on a tall hill which was pretty cool before heading back. That evening after more one-dollar meals we decided to just have one drink on pub street and get to bed early to make sure we didn't' miss sunrise again. However another classic motto of the trip in 'never rule anything out,' did us no favours. We basically got chatting to these Australian girls and then got absolutely hammered off our faces. At around 2 in the morning when things starting shutting and we realised we needed to leave in a couple of hours for sunrise, we decided that of course there would be no point in going to bed so we went back to the girls' place for an after party (after using my ultimate shark cunning in convincing the security guard that we were merely going up to collect a DVD?!?). So at 4 in the morning we stumbled straight from their hotel into the tuk tuk for sunrise at Angkor Wat. Whilst we were waiting for the sun to rise I took a turn for the worst and passed out in the dark somewhere against a tree. Then Ben came and woke me to help him take photos of the sunrise and to take photos of me in my sorry state, repeatedly proclaiming how fine he felt. b******, but he would get his. My mood was summed up anyway by my complete lack of shame in walking all the way round the huge lake in front of the temple to tell this bird to move because she was ruining everyone's photos. I mean hey I'm not a nasty guy but I felt indescribingly horrendous and Ben refused to leave until he got a good photo without her in. In fact he himself told a group of these huge women to f*** off as they themselves began to venture into line of his camera. We really made friends that morning. The next temple we went to was really nice actually, it had like this lake in the middle of it surrounded by steps and the reflection from the sun made the whole place glisten, it was pretty spectacular. Unfortunately I could only appreciate it briefly as I found more much needed slumber, sprawling myself out across one of the steps and then getting eaten alive by ants, much to Ben's amusement once again. But it did the job and after that I perked up and was well up for some more temples. But of course the previous night then came round and bit Ben in the ass as he started to struggle, much to my delight. We managed a couple more temples that I don't really remember before the driver drove us back to the hotel and we both collapsed for the afternoon. That night we really did just chill, the girls having experienced a similarly rough day, so we agreed to catch up the following night and take this one easy. We cut our final day at the temples short as by this time, splendid as they were don't get me wrong, they really were getting a tad samey. 'Same same but different' as they say over there. But we also needed to hit the markets to buy gifts. Boy that was a tedious afternoon, Ben's trademark indecisiveness coming in to full force. But after hours of trawling around and haggling for the sake of a few pence we finally got everything we needed. That last night we decided splash out on a nice meal at an actual restaurant although we ordered a 4-man combo dish of curry thinking we were hard and couldn't finish it, a rare occurrence for us. That night we went out again with the girls and one of the Canadian guys from Laos who we had been arranging to catch up with, and made the most out of our final night in South East Asia, bucket in hand dancing the night away. How appropriate.
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