Crazy, Crazy Cambodia - Siem Reap

From Bangkok we took a train to the Cambodian border. Our experience at the border was the least fun and least safe part of our trip thus far - we were taken by our tuk tuk (a kind of 3 wheeled taxi) to a tourist office with scam artists trying to sell us visas and trips for inflated prices. We refused to go into the building and told him again and again to take us to the OFFICIAL border. When we got to the actual border we were again swarmed by scam artists and yelling men telling us what to do and where to go. Not believing any of them, we didn't listen to any of them and found the immigration office ourselves. At that point I thought we had gotten through the hard part - boy was I wrong! The immigration/visa officials also tried to hustle more money out of us, we again resisted until they gave us the proper price, and we got ripped off by the taxi company which charged $15 per person to Siem Reap. By this time we didn't care though, we just wanted to get to Siem Reap!

Us on the Cambodian border with a guy who claimed to work for the Cambodian government helping visitors get through immigration - we're still not sure if he was telling the truth . . . we took everything he said with a grain of salt.


In the beginning we had a love/hate relationship with Cambodia (the liars, scam artists, pestering beggars, etc got rather annoying) but after getting the hang of dealing with the untrustworthy, visiting the famous Angkor Wat and meeting some great Cambodians we've decided we like it here. The Cambodian people have the best sense of humor :)

Our first full day in Cambodia we hired a tuk tuk to drive us around with our friend Harmon (who we met on the train) to see many of the different temples. Our first stop was the enormous, Angkor Wat - the largest temple in the world.


The great part about all of the temples is that you get to go into them, explore, climb around, etc. There is very little blocked off to the public so it's a great adventure.



This is in the temple that was used in the filming of Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie. You can see that nature is winning here as it takes over the temple . . .


This is a parasite tree growing up the side of another tree. It was so incredible to walk through the ruins of the temple and the many trees growing right up (and through) the walls.


Just an example of the intricate carvings found on just about all of the temples. It's wonderful how much detail has been preserved on them.


This was my favorate temple, Bayon. On each of the peaks you see here there are four faces carved, one facing each direction. In total there are 216 faces!


A closer shot of the main peak of Bayon. Each of the faces all over the temple look just like this one - it's sort of eerie when you're up in the temple and you look around to see all of these same faces looking at you.


We have only a little bit of time left in Cambodia before we head to Vietnam. We're taking a bus from Phnom Penh, the capital city where we are now, to Ho Chi Minh City. Not too many pictures from Phnom Penh since we've only seen a couple of things and they've mainly been about the genocide of the Khmer Rouge . . .

Until next time from Vietnam . . . K & A :)