I am writing this blog from our hotel room in Siem Reap. I can hear birds twittering in the palm tree outside our window and Buddhist Monks chanting in the distance. We have had the fortunate misfortune of being trapped here for 4 days more than we expected. [Something to do with our visas for Thailand, don't ask!] At first we thought we were going to be bored here but, due to our enforced extended stay we have found Siem Reap has so much more to offer besides the magnificent Angkor Wat temples.

Our first day we decided to explore the centre of Siem Reap, we visited the markets trying to find stalls selling fried strange looking bugs to photograph for you but were disappointed as we didn't find any. Our hunt will continue though and the results will be posted on here for your enjoyment.

During our 'wander 'my feet were swollen and painful from all the travelling and heat. We passed a rundown building advertising Japanese foot massage by blind Cambodians. We enquired and I was told I could have a full hour foot massage for $5!!!!! I was up on the bed in no time!

A blind man emerged from the back room and asked me, did I want strong massage or medium? Knowing my feet were in a bad way, I said 'strong'. All I can say is that what the guy lacked in visual abilities he made up in strength in his hands, I was soon shouting 'medium, medium', but the pain was still virtually unbearable. I laid there thinking about people being tortured, having their toe nails ripped out and what a wimp I was.I must admit, I still wonder whether he had been trained by Pol Pot and not the Japanese masters as advertised.

Needless to say my feet feel fab now and I think he has cured me of all my ills.

After my foot massage, Dave must have felt he deserved some foot therapy too and, after a few beers to give him courage; he crossed the road to a place where you put your feet in a 'fish tank' and let the fish eat the dead skin off your feet. He was absolutely hysterical at first and I scorned him for being a sissy, this just provoked him and he dared me to have a go. Well, hysterical isn't the word. The guys running it were shouting 'After few minutes no more tickle' and sure enough the hysterics did die down and they told us 'Happy hour for you, you stay as long as you like' so we did, the fish had a good feed and we had a good giggle. [See photos and video]

Tuesday

We booked a tuk tuk driver, who seemed to speak good English, to take us to the temples for 5 o'clock in the morning, so we could see the sun rise!It was dark and silent when we got up but, there was our tuk tuk driver duly waiting in the courtyard of the hotel. He gave us a bottle of water to sweeten us up and then introduced his friend who would be driving us because he couldn't make it today. On we climbed and it wasn't until 'imposter tuk tuk man' dropped us, in the dark, in a park full of other tuk tuks that we realised he didn't speak much English at all so it was no good asking him any questions or asking him to be our guide. There were several other early birds so we followed them [How come everyone else seemed to know where they were going and what they were doing? We didn't even know where we were!] Some were clever enough to have brought torches so we followed the beams of light through some gates, up and down steps, along uneven pathways until we came to what looked like a courtyard full of hundreds of people. We were in the middle of this huge crowd in the pitch black when the pains started coming!

I have boasted, in previous blogs, about the street food we have eaten and the lack of washing up and hand washing facilities and how, up until now, neither of us has had a dodgy tum. Well, we had a super meal for a dollar each from a stand the night before, it was so delicious we said it was up in our top 4 favourite meals of the trip, but boy was I paying for it now. How was I to find a loo in the dark? Was there a loo? How do I get out of this crowd? Well I made it just in time, but the whole day was taken up with sharp pains, dizziness, hot flushes [no fun in this heat] and finding somewhere to recover in the shade.The temples were fascinating and mysterious: Angkor Wat, one of the more famous ones, was huge and just like you see in the books. Bayon is the one with the classic stone faces; Ankor Thom was built within a beautiful moat with an impressive entrance flanked by 54 gods and 54 demons. Ta Prohm was the one Dave mostly wanted to see, it's the one where the trees are growing out of the buildings [see our photos] and pretty much keeping the buildings upright. This is where Tomb raider was filmed. We did a couple of others but it was hot and tiring and expensive to return another day, there are many more but we felt we had 'done our bit', seen the main ones and it was time to go back to 'Home Sweet Home' [The name of our guest house]

Oh and guess who we saw sitting under a tree, in a cafe at one of the Temples?