Siem Reap

The trip to Siem Reap was a bit hellish to say the least. It was a 4.5 hour bus trip to the boarder, and then we really saw what we had gotten into. Children as young as nine carrying infants and using them to beg from tourists, garbage, unpaved roads, slimey people who wanted nothing but to "help you..." and all this was just a few meters into Cambodia at the Thailand - Cambodia border.

When we got through the border, we were told that taxis were not allowed to park at the border, instead all tourists had to bord a mandatory tourist bus and be taken to the "tourist station" where they proceeded to be ripped off by these very kind gentlemen for a ride to Siem Reap.

As we later found out, these kind gentlemen were all part of a little former Khumer Rouge Cartel set up to threaten any cabbie with boddily harm who offered a ride to a tourist for the going rate of about $5 per person, so that they could go ahead and charge $55 per car for a ride to Siem Reap. At this point Michelle was really under the weather though, and we had no choice to give in and pay the $55 USD to get us to our guest house in Siem Reap.

The ride there was another sory all together. We were in a Toyota Camary with raised up suspension and the gas tank in the trunk - that should give you some idea of the road conditions for the 150 km journey that took 3 hours. We stopped counting how many times our heads hit the roof of the seatbeltless car, but we did end up getting there in one peice.

The guesthouse we stayed at was quite nice - had a hot shower (not always standard), satelite TV, and A/C (also not always standard). Michelle spent the first two days in bed with a cold and only ventured out n the third day. Jerod Tended to her mostly, in between running erands in town.

Once Michelle was finally better, we hired a tuk tuk (motorcycle pulling a two seat carriage) for the first day of our tour of the Ankor Temples. It was a pretty amazing sight to see. Ankor Wat, the largest of the Temples is the Largest Religious structure in the world - bigger than the Taj Mahal, and St. Peters in the Vatican City, and yet it was built over 900 years ago.

We had a three day pass to the temple grounds and on the second and third days, decided to get some exercise and rented bicycles to get around. Sore only begins to explain how our asses felt after the two days.