02/03/2005 This is what happens when you leave the temples to the jungle...
Thursday, March 03, 2005
All temple'd out (Steve)oh, and deep fried spiders!!
Our first night in Siam Reap starts with sunset on top of a temple on a huge hill, along with about 2000 other tourists, maddest sunset we've seen as the sun went behind a cloud resulting an orange outline to the cloud resembling weird lightening!! Then an early night as we are up before dawn to spend the day seeing temple ruins at Angkor......
So the 2nd March starts at 5.30 am to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. This old city dates from around 1000 AD and was the centre of the Khmer empire until roughly 1430 when the capital city shifted to the better situated Phnom Penh (where we're now sitting).
It was worth the early start, this place is stunning, we've seen the palace with the most 'bling' in Bangkok but this was totally different. At least ten big temples of slightly differing ages form what used to be the centre of the Khmer empire, its a huge place requiring a motorbike towing a trailer with us in it to get round!!! Hopefully the pictures Sian is putting on will look as good as it can on screen. I'm going to let the pictures do the talking but all I can say is that these are where they filmed some of Tomb Raider, thats the kind of place it is, it was like discovering the Inca trail in South America or some similar amazing place of history. I can only say it is so good I think everyone should go to Cambodia especially. Apart from the very strong (eye-watering at times) bat droppings etc in the roofs of a lot of the temples.
The one downside to it all is the heat and dust, we drank about 5 litres of water to one trip to the loo, and thats not an exageration! By 3pm we were knackered and so ended our extraordinary trip to Angkor. Many, many amazing memories of this day........
3rd March 2005- Up early again to get the 7.30 bus to Phnom Penh, bracing ourselves for another truely awful ride across rutts and bumps.......only to end up on a bus that had working air-con, and we were on surfaced roads!!!! Such a relief. We stopped for refreshments at Skuon, a town offering very little unless you're partial to a deep fried Tarantula, after eating the crickets and ants in Bangkok I ........no I didnt, but they did actually smell quiet nice, maybe next time....
Anyway we rocked into Cambodia's capital at 2pm to be mobbed by touts for hotels, they pretty much started fighting over us (and two english lads we'd met in Siam Reap) and ended up going to a hotel that was full!! Idiots. So we trudge back across to find Royal guest house and a fourth floor room overlooking the city!! All's well that ends well, of back there now for some banges and mash!! See ya............
So the 2nd March starts at 5.30 am to get to Angkor Wat for sunrise. This old city dates from around 1000 AD and was the centre of the Khmer empire until roughly 1430 when the capital city shifted to the better situated Phnom Penh (where we're now sitting).
It was worth the early start, this place is stunning, we've seen the palace with the most 'bling' in Bangkok but this was totally different. At least ten big temples of slightly differing ages form what used to be the centre of the Khmer empire, its a huge place requiring a motorbike towing a trailer with us in it to get round!!! Hopefully the pictures Sian is putting on will look as good as it can on screen. I'm going to let the pictures do the talking but all I can say is that these are where they filmed some of Tomb Raider, thats the kind of place it is, it was like discovering the Inca trail in South America or some similar amazing place of history. I can only say it is so good I think everyone should go to Cambodia especially. Apart from the very strong (eye-watering at times) bat droppings etc in the roofs of a lot of the temples.
The one downside to it all is the heat and dust, we drank about 5 litres of water to one trip to the loo, and thats not an exageration! By 3pm we were knackered and so ended our extraordinary trip to Angkor. Many, many amazing memories of this day........
3rd March 2005- Up early again to get the 7.30 bus to Phnom Penh, bracing ourselves for another truely awful ride across rutts and bumps.......only to end up on a bus that had working air-con, and we were on surfaced roads!!!! Such a relief. We stopped for refreshments at Skuon, a town offering very little unless you're partial to a deep fried Tarantula, after eating the crickets and ants in Bangkok I ........no I didnt, but they did actually smell quiet nice, maybe next time....
Anyway we rocked into Cambodia's capital at 2pm to be mobbed by touts for hotels, they pretty much started fighting over us (and two english lads we'd met in Siam Reap) and ended up going to a hotel that was full!! Idiots. So we trudge back across to find Royal guest house and a fourth floor room overlooking the city!! All's well that ends well, of back there now for some banges and mash!! See ya............
Bug munching (both)
Thats as destinct from rug munching, thats an entirely different ball game!!
Seriously though, eating crickets and ants really is ok . So we didnt try the scorpions but would you??
The Crickets tasted very similar to prawns and ants a bit like spring onions suprisingly.
Wouldn't eat them again unless we were starving and that was all that was on offer, but even then we wouldn't mind.
Seriously though, eating crickets and ants really is ok . So we didnt try the scorpions but would you??
The Crickets tasted very similar to prawns and ants a bit like spring onions suprisingly.
Wouldn't eat them again unless we were starving and that was all that was on offer, but even then we wouldn't mind.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
The roads of hell (Steve)
Well, despite the re-assurances of the travel agent in Bangkok that its รก nice bus' and despite the fact that we had been warned about Cambodia we were a little disgruntled to find our day (28/2/05) went like this;
7am-Pick up time, only the minibus wasnt to take us to the 'nice bus' it was taking all the way to the border!! So bad start really, pretty uncomfortable too.
12noon (roughly) Pull up at a point about 10kms short of the border, whereupon the 'helpful' guides will get our visas for us, and charge 1200baht for the privilledge. We state that its only 1000 at the border but as they had dropped us in the middle of nowhere we were stuck, because we would apparently miss our bus the other side.
2pm-The border crossing. Waiting in a queue, with backpack, in seering heat, for ages anyway, then another quick ride on a motorbike taxi thing to a bus station, which was actually a shop of a travel company. We then had a 30 minute wait for our 'nice bus', which turned out to be a cramped, bouncy 24 seater whose air con wasnot working. Wonderful so far.
So the bus gets underway and soon we are wondering if we'll make it to Siam Reap, to call the roads roads is really not right, rutted dirt tracks is far more acurate. But when your old bus is trying to go at 40kms an hour over them you quickly realise just how insane this is. How the bus doesnt split down the middle is anyones guess, we got shaken around so badly, but just to prove the saying that theres always someone worse of than you is correct, some poor girl had food poisoning!!! The bus then broke down taking 1.5 hours to fix, although they also got the air con to work, but only for an hour or so. Some of the bridges on the track are wooden and very worring, the driver helped by telling us that sometimes bigger vehicles (we're on a frigging bus!!) break the bridge and either get stuck or fall......thanks pal.
After all this we finally get to Siam Reap at 11pm, 5 hours late, feeling like we'd gone a few rounds with Lennox Lewis. In India we thought we'd found some bad roads, this place is up there with Mozambique as having the worst roads on the planet (according to the lonely planet) and we can well believe them!! Bring on the boat to Phom Phen!!
7am-Pick up time, only the minibus wasnt to take us to the 'nice bus' it was taking all the way to the border!! So bad start really, pretty uncomfortable too.
12noon (roughly) Pull up at a point about 10kms short of the border, whereupon the 'helpful' guides will get our visas for us, and charge 1200baht for the privilledge. We state that its only 1000 at the border but as they had dropped us in the middle of nowhere we were stuck, because we would apparently miss our bus the other side.
2pm-The border crossing. Waiting in a queue, with backpack, in seering heat, for ages anyway, then another quick ride on a motorbike taxi thing to a bus station, which was actually a shop of a travel company. We then had a 30 minute wait for our 'nice bus', which turned out to be a cramped, bouncy 24 seater whose air con wasnot working. Wonderful so far.
So the bus gets underway and soon we are wondering if we'll make it to Siam Reap, to call the roads roads is really not right, rutted dirt tracks is far more acurate. But when your old bus is trying to go at 40kms an hour over them you quickly realise just how insane this is. How the bus doesnt split down the middle is anyones guess, we got shaken around so badly, but just to prove the saying that theres always someone worse of than you is correct, some poor girl had food poisoning!!! The bus then broke down taking 1.5 hours to fix, although they also got the air con to work, but only for an hour or so. Some of the bridges on the track are wooden and very worring, the driver helped by telling us that sometimes bigger vehicles (we're on a frigging bus!!) break the bridge and either get stuck or fall......thanks pal.
After all this we finally get to Siam Reap at 11pm, 5 hours late, feeling like we'd gone a few rounds with Lennox Lewis. In India we thought we'd found some bad roads, this place is up there with Mozambique as having the worst roads on the planet (according to the lonely planet) and we can well believe them!! Bring on the boat to Phom Phen!!
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