Cambodia

We arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia after a very long journey (1 hr flight to Bangkok at 8am, then waiting at bus station for 3 hours, then 4.5 hr bus ride to Cambodian border- where we were thankfully met by a representative from our guesthouse who made the would-be sketchy process easy, then 3 hour taxi ride to Siem Reap). It is so different here than Thailand- besides the language (they speak Khmer) and food, it also seems a little more "third world"than Thailand. There is a lot more begging and even more attention paid to foreigners. Low season seems even more obvious here as there is only one other person staying in our guesthouse and hardly any foreigners on the streets. I love our little guesthouse (called Two Dragons)- it is run by an American man who is very helpful, and the little restaurant attached is decent and cheap!

Today we rented bikes ($1 for the whole day) and biked about 3km to the Angkor temples. We saw two areas of temples, which were really impressive of course. We felt like we were exploring the temples like Indiana Jones! There is so much history here that we didn't know about. Most of the temples were built during the 12th and 13th centuries and built out of sandstone, so it is amazing how much detail there is in the wall reliefs. Angkor Wat was of course incredible and HUGE!! It took us the entire afternoon to walk around the grounds. We should have seen more temples, but the heat slowed us down. It is very very hot here and we feel like we are melting everytime we step outside. We paid for a "pricey" meal at the only restaurant here purely just so we could sit in an A/C room for a bit.

Cambodia is really strange in that the official currency is US Dollars- go figure. They also speak much better English here, but everything is a bit pricier here than Thailand. Tomorrow we will explore some more temples and maybe visit the Land Mine Museum. Still can't upload pics, because our internet access here is limited. Send me cool thoughts...