Totally Templed out...

Siem Reap is the setting for Cambodia most famous monument.. Angkor Wat, the series of temples build in the 14th century. The town has dveloped into a nice spot much in the way of Luang Prabang in Laos. There are nice coffee houses and patisseries as well as a nice vibe in the town itself with locals mixing in with tourists, however as it attracts budget tourists and those on package tours it is quite a bit more expensive than LP.

In order to visit the temples you must pay a slightly steep charge of $20 for 1 day or $40 for 3 days, Em and I decided early on that the best plan was 3 days of cycling round the temples and ruins. Our hostel was roughly 6 km outside of the temples and then arriving in the area was roughly a 15 km cycle around, so we managed to clock up 60odd kms for our 3 days. The 2 most famous temples of the area are Angkor Wat and Angkor Prohm (the 1 where the trees have grown in/around the temple). We decided to take our 3 days very easily and did 3-4 hours of sightseeing in the morning for the first 2 days and then a Sunrise on our final day, sadly the Sunrise was cloudy so was a bit of waste of time really.

That takes us back up to date now, we are curently back in Phnom Penh, we have our Vietnamese visas ready and will be booking a bus for Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City for Monday morning. We have 1 month in Vietnam moving from HCMC up along the coast through Na Trang,then a couple of days in Ha Long Bay finishing up in Hanoi before heading across to South-West China.

Hope everyone is well... we will try and update Facebook with some photos of Laos and Cambodia

written by

Michael Russell on June 13, 2009 from Siem Reap, Cambodia

from the travel blog: Escape from Blighty

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