The Kingdom of Cambodia

We decided to bite the bullet and spring for a flight to Siem Reap rather than deal with the land border crossing. Our flight left Bangkok in the early evening and as we made our way east we could have just as easily been flying over the ocean than any sort of landmass. Once it got dark there were hardly any lights and I could see lightning to the south. We arrived in Siem Reap to a steady rain shower, paid $20 each for our visa-on-arrival and headed outside to look for the pickup our hostel had arranged. Standing there in the rain with the biggest smile holding a sign that read "Welcome to Siem Reap Hostel Andrew Bourassa" stood our tuk-tuk driver, Socheat. He ran over to the parking area, pulled his tuk-tuk to the curb, helped us load our bags and off we went.

Once we arrived at the hostel Socheat wrote his name and number on one of the hostel business cards and told us that if we wanted to go anywhere the next day he could take us.

The next morning we woke up relatively late and had breakfast at the hostel (pancakes with banana creme and syrup for both of us). We went to the lobby and asked them to call Socheat and he came running up to the hostel entrance and asked us what we wanted to do. We didn't have much of an idea of what we wanted to do, all we knew was that there were a ton of temples to see and that we should see some of them.  Socheat came up with an itinerary and took us to Banteay Kdei first.

Banteay Kdei has a long walkway up to the temple lined with people (mostly kids) trying to sell you stuff (bracelets, books, postcards). Once we got into the temple it was very quiet and peaceful with very few tourists.  By far the quietest temple and Katie's favorite.

Next up: Ta Prohm (Tomb Raider temple).  This was a temple we had heard we must go to, but when we arrived there was construction going on in the center buildings.  This meant that not only could we not explore the center temple but there was a ton of construction noise.  Not peaceful at all.  We got stuck in a downpour under a little bamboo sign for 20 minutes before heading back to the tuk tuk.

Ta Keo is a tiny temple we stopped at for just a few minutes.  There were hardly any tourists but there was also not much to see.

The last temple complex we visited was Angkor Thom which was once a huge city (about 10 square km).  At this point we were pretty exhausted and getting a little templed out.  We were dropped off at Bayon which was really surreal with all the faces.  Unlike any other temple in Angkor.  We walked down the road to meet out tuk tuk driver, passing by Baphoun, Elephant terrace and other things that we just couldn't muster the energy to spending a lot of time on.