Cambodia - Siem Reap and Phnom Penh

The coach from Bangkok to Siem Reap took about 8 hours in total although with a a few breaks, very comfy seats and the border crossing (which was so lax, we've had stricter train ticket checks), it was quite pleasant! We had been told by multiple people that the border is full of scams so went with a well known company that takes your passports and handles everything for you - they didn't even check the person on the passport matched the person in front of them. We think the extra 5 USD 'processing fee' on top of the visa makes things go a lot more smoothly...

We organised a man called Virak to take us round Angkor on his Tuk Tuk the next day, and he offered picked us up from the bus station and take us to our hostel. It was actually more luxurious than a normal Tuk Tuk with more room and silky seats, they're common in Cambodia and called a moto-remorque.

We checked into our private room in the hostel, which we were very happy with for £12 a night for both of us, and had an explore into Siem Reap. Its definitely a tourist destination with a busy pub street, lots of stalls and TukTuk drivers offering to take you round Angkor.

We had an early night, as we were starting at 4:30am the next day for our tour round Angkor. It is incredibly hot in Cambodia, it was 28°C at sunrise and about 40°C by midday so lots of people start early to beat the heat.

Virak took us first to Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise. Before researching it, we didn't realise that Angkor Wat was just one temple but Angkor spans over 400km² and has lots of temples and structures. We were only spending a day but you could take a week to do it if you wanted. We sat on the edge of a pool with the dark sky and sounds of unnerving plops every now and again from the water and patiently waited as the outline of the Wat became clearer as the sun rose.

After watching the sunrise and Virak showing off his photography skills, we went inside to explore the Wat. It was so much bigger than we anticipated and hard to get the scale in a photo - hopefully you can judge from tiny looking Lauryn. The amazing thing was it wasn't just huge, it was also very detailed with literally thousands of stone carvings, some of which were 50m in length like a tapestry.

After Angkor Wat we were taken to Ta Prohm which unlike Angkor Wat had been left to the jungle but has recently been restored. We also learned that the stone Buddha's heads were removed when a king reverted Angkor to Hinduism.

If it looks like something out of Tomb Raider, thats because Tomb Raider was filmed here!

At one point Dan tricked Lauryn into posing like an aspara, and then that was a bit of a theme.

After Ta Prohm was Ta Keo which was apparently unfinished but still was one of the most impressive temples we've seen. We climbed the very steep steps to the top which wasn't entirely fun in the weather!

Our next stop was one of the gates into Angkor Thom, which was a huge city and contains lots of structures. Virak again showing his photography expertise.

The final stop was Bayon, a slightly crazy temple in the middle of Angkor Thom with dozens of faces in the walls that apparently look like the king who had it built.

We were all done by 11:30am, but 7 hours after we had started, we'd had enough! We got Virak to drop us at a spring rolls and cocktails cafe we'd seen for a well deserved treat.

We napped off the afternoon, but made sure we were out in time to watch Liverpool play United and had a delicious Mexican for dinner.

We had another day in Siem Reap, where we did a bit of wandering and discovering the city, and cooled off reading books by/in the pool.

The next morning we got breakfast at a cafe and boarded a 8:45am coach to the capital, Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh

Our coach dropped us in central Phnom Penh and we could tell it was very different to Siem Reap, much much bigger and more like other Southeast Asian capital cities.

We checked in to our hotel and the street was buzzing with people drinking and dancing as it was the build up to the Songkran festival which we hd heard about in Thailand but didn't realised it stretched as far as Cambodia too.

We wandered up to the Wat Phnom temple and had a bit of an explore of the city. On the way back to the hotel, we stumbled across a sandwich stall selling Cambodia's version of a bahn mi. With very little English we managed to order a pork belly sandwich and were so glad we did as it was delicious!

We then took advantage of happy hour at a rooftop bar and ate dinner at David's noodles whose noodles were all hand pulled and deliciously chewy. We shared duck noodles and gyoza - we agreed the gyoza were some of the best we'd ever eaten!

The following day we visited the Killing Fields and S21 Genocide museum which documented the brutal genocide of over 2 million Cambodians (1/3 of the population) by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Having not known much about this before visiting, we both came away feeling overwhelmed with emotion and shocked how the World let this happen less than 50 years ago. S21 was a school which had been turned into a interrogation camp before people were transferred to the Killing Fields. We were showed round by a lady from Phnom Penh whose family had been forced to the countryside to work. She was separated from her father and brother who she presumes were killed. Its hard to describe these places and the atrocities which happened there so we aren't going to try to but what made us feel most uncomfortable was the little knowledge we both had on this part of history - it is not taught in schools and probably due to the Vietnam War, seems it is still a big taboo subject in the West.

The other thing we spent a surprisingly long amount of time doing in Phnom Penh was trying to get some cash. ATMs only dispense US dollars in $100 notes, but no one will accept a $100 bill to pay for a $2 meal. Because its not the official currency, banks won't change it to smaller notes unless you withdraw it from them, so we had to take out another $100 from a bank to get something we could actually use. You also get change in riels even when paying in dollars and dollars must be in pristine condition to be accepted... currency in Cambodia is one of the more difficult things we've had to deal with!

After this heavy day, we took some time to process and got dinner at an Indian restaurant we had walked past. We ordered a feast as everything looked so good and tucked in. We finished the evening with a dip in the hotel's rooftop pool.

After some breakfast and watching people doing Tai Chi by the riverfront, we boarded the bus ready for country number 6: Vietnam!