Angkor Wat?

We boarded a very small plane for the short jump to Cambodia. Cambodia very quickly became the best place I have ever been. Most of us have learned about the Roman Empires in high school history - about their empire and their amazing advances in architecture - raise your hand if you can tell me about the 12th Century Khmer Empire - anyone? Bueller? Angkor Wat is a temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation—first Hindu, dedicated to Vishnu, then Buddhist. The other temples...not so preserved...

Early on the first day, we found a tuk tuk driver to take us to the ruins. He was a nice teenage boy who quickly secured his place as our "driver" for our entire stay. For just $10 US he spent 8 hours shuttling between all of the temples. We gave him $15 at the end of the day - you should have seen the smile! That first day we went to all of the temples aside from Angkor Wat, including Ta Prahm (as I affectionately came to call Ta 'Shrimp'). It is most famous as the setting for Tomb Raider. When they discovered it the forest had over taken it. Some of the tree couldn't be removed during when they were excavating it because they had become part of the structure.

Our most loyal readers know by now that we fly by the seat of our pants when it comes to our travels. In most cases, that suits us well. This isn't one of those cases...after our day of exploring and climbing old temples, we went to the concierge to book our flight to Vietnam for the next day. And that's when we learned we need a Visa for Vietnam?! Uh-oh...okay we'll get visa, we just need to go to the Vietnam consulate - easy. What, there's no consulate in Siem Reap? hmm...how much do we want to go to Vietnam? My determination led to what could have been a very stupid choice. We sent our passport via air courier to the closest city that had a consulate. Yes, you read that right. We gave our passports to some stranger while in a foreign country. With a bit of a pit in our stomachs we went into town (w/o our passports) to enjoy dinner at the Red Piano - a favorite spot of Angelina's.

The next morning we got up in the dark to get to Angkor Wat in time to see the sunrise. Amazing! We spent hours exploring the temple - they say 80,000 people staffed it back in the day. On the way back, the tuk-tuk needed some petrol. We had to wake up a guy from his nap in a hammock so he could pour a coke bottle's worth of oil into the motor bike.

Siem Reap Day Three - The schedule has officially changed. We're still waiting for the Vietnam visa's to be returned Monday night so we've extended our Cambodia portion an extra two days. We spent the extra touring the neighboring villages/farms while on horseback. This was very exciting as I've never ridden before. We were fitted with Cambodian horses - somewhere between a pony and normal sized horse. My horse always had to be in the lead - even ahead of our guide (who by the way didn't speak a word of English).

Day four - Sean headed into town to pick up our passports (PHEW!)- this time with visas - and to book our flight to HCMC. Booking flights via the internet are not always possible. Furthermore, the prices quoted online are typically more expensive than when you find in here. We packed and headed to the airport.There was a Dairy Queen in the Siem Reap airport. Needless to say, we split a kit kat blizzard.