Mr and Mrs Ross abroad: Jingle bells and temples

After a really nice six hour bus ride from Phnom Penh we arrived into Siem Reap. The last part of our trip that was vaguely planned in advance, accommodation was sorted and they sent a tuk-tuk to pick us up. The Driver was ‘Soun’.
It quickly became apparent that Cambodia is a fairly expensive country to travel in. At least in comparison to Thailand and certainly on a six month trip budget! For a holiday though it would be fair and I guess we only visited the super touristy spots. They use the dollar more than their own currency of Riel.
Because of budget issues here we headed straight for the street food, which in Bangkok we were really enjoying (more on that in a later post to follow...squeak....). Here we paid between $1 and $2.50 for a main meal each, which was much better than the expensive restaurants. Siem Reap is a very new town on the backpacker trail. Their main strip “pub street” opened its first pub in 1998, before then it was just a dusty road with electricity only a few hours a day. At the end of pub street is a corner covered in street food stalls and this became our spot for dinners. Over three nights we tried three different places and on the third night I managed to convince Ed that it was nearly our last night in Cambodia and so we should make the most of the Cambodian food so we ordered a feast of dishes all at $1 each and tucked in!

Apsaras at Angkor Wat

Victory Gate at Angkor Thom

Messing about at Angkor Thom

Needless to say the reason we were visiting Siem Reap was to indulge my love of temples! We bought a three day pass to Angkor Wat temples (Wedding gift No3. Thanks to the lovely Lucy and Dacey!) Day one we got a guide ‘Joe’ and he took us all around Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and we went to the top of a mountain to watch sunset. It sounds romantic but when you are surrounded by 100s of fellow travellers, not quite what we were anticipating! In fact I uttered the phrase to Ed that I didn’t think travelling does broaden the mind, i’m beginning to think in fact that it makes you racist! Let’s just say there are a couple of nationalities that are beginning to grate on us!
The second day we just went with our Tuk Tuk driver Soun, and visited seven temples in all, i’m afraid now they are somewhat one in memory but the photos will help! The third day was Christmas Day and we hired bikes and did Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom again, at our own pace and LOVED it.
Christmas eve we enjoyed a few cocktails and beers, some fabulous frozen margheritas were had, and then had our feast at the street stall. Along Pub street they have ridiculous discounts on beer so we stopped into a bar for a nightcap. We ended up chatting to the gent next to us, Frederic, a French-Canadian who volunteers at the local children’s hospital every year for a few months and has been doing this for ten years. He was a psychologist and we had some very interesting chats with him. He was a lovely man, he sponsors a couple of young men allowing them to get to go to University. A very nice man that taught us a lot in the few hours we spent with him. Before we knew it, it was midnight and Christmas Day so we toasted each other and headed back to the hotel.