Angkor What?

After a few days in Phnom Penh we headed north to Siem Reap, famous for its UNESCO World Heritage site - Angkor Wat - the largest religious structure in the world. The bus journey up was a bit of a nightmare, hungover (ok thats our fault), incredibly bumping dirt roads (the road was still being BUILT in some places but they just drive over), Cambodian kareoke music on replay on the bus tv and the worst thing of all....incessant horn blowing from the driver. It turns out they don't bother with indicators so when approaching a scooter, slower vehicle, walker, farmer...even roadside animals the driver would blast to indicate he was coming and you sure as hell better get out of the way (this goes for on-coming traffic too!). A nice 7 hour trip!

We arrived in Siem Reap and had a driver from our guesthouse pick us up (posh eh?). We checked in and inquired about trips to Angkor Wat and its surrounding temples - an area literally covered in temples (interestingly enough it is where they filmed Tomb Raider). We decided on a 1 day trip out and around the area - including a 5am start in order to get out to see the sun rise, seemingly stunning.

We lazily scraped ourselves out of bed and into our tuk tuk with Fook our driver (his name wasn't Fook but he wanted it to be his nickname - really nice guy). We got out to Angkor Wat and even in the darkness it is hard to avoid sheer size of the structure. We made our way into the grounds to pick a good photo spot and waited...


and waited....


and waited....



It basically went from being dark out, to being slightly brighter, to being daytime. To say we felt a bit hard done by is a huge understatement! The only silver lining being meeting a pair of Americans who were on the same sunrise "adventure" as us, part of a larger group of people travelling so we arranged some boozing for later with them. After some brekkie Fook took us to a number of different temple sites, some still standing strong against the errosion of time, others succumbing to inquistive roots of trees intertwining themselves around temple walls with pretty cool results. Again the fingerprint of the Khymer Rouge was ever present - they had invaded the area and decapitated every statue they could get their hands on. Being the educated (and cheap) men that we are we decided to buy the guide book and be our own guides, instead of dishing out the full whack for an actual guide (who knows what they are talking about!)...let's just say we won't be getting called in for job openings! While it was nice strolling (and in some parts, swinging like a monkey) around the temples, we quickly became tired and irritated by the large groups of Japanese tourists taking over ever nice picture spot with their umbrellas and huge cameras (not bitter at all!). We ended our tour with a walk around the main Angkor Wat area, a very impressive area but I think my best memory of it will be taking the greatest photo of all time...a monk flashing...


(doirty monks!)

We returned to the guesthouse, our beds calling out to us for power naps. We were asleep before the door had closed behind us! I got up a little earlier to go in search of a massage parlour - my back had been hurting me ever since the uncomfortable Ko Tao to Bangkok journey, so Fook brought be to a local place where a full body massage for an hour set me back the MASSIVE sum of $5 - where back home you would pay anything upwards of €70-80, probably more! Very relaxing even if at some parts of it she was literally walking all over me. But came out feeling alot better, the back knot well worked out. I decided to spoil ourselves and buy some shower gel AND some shampoo, a luxury not afforded to us yet on the trip (we don't smell that bad...). We headed out for dinner and drinks, accompanied by one of the guesthouse workers, nice to chat to some local people about the history of the town instead of just reading what Lonely Planet has to say. The Americans came in later with their group and some good old fashioned partying ensued - Gareth and I both wanted the free t-shirt they were offering, it just meant having to order two cocktail pitchers at a time, we were only too happy to oblige! They were a good interesting bunch - including the first Dominican (not Dominican Republican!) I've ever met and after hearing more about DR it just re-confirmed my desire to go there at some stage. Ended the night getting lost in a tuk tuk on the way home, eventually making it back to the safety of Yellow Guesthouse.

After ticking the Angkor Wat box there was not a whole load of other things we wanted to do here - we scheduled a DHD for the next day. Gareth slept most of the day - I went out and invented some new rules to pool before coming home with the intention for both of us to power nap and head out again - at 6pm we went asleep, thinking a good 3 hours will sort us out - woke up at 10am the next morning! Out like lights! Made the decision then to get back to Phnom Penh were we would sort out our visas for Laos and most importantly, find somewhere to watch the rugby! It turned out Fook was on the bus with us, he was going to his home town along the route and he begged us if we would come stay a night in the town, his cousin was getting married the next day and he said he would love to have us see it....decision time...an amazing, unique and cultural experience...or potentially watching Ireland win a Grand Slam - yep that's right...an easy choice...


No description of what the night of the game was like as for the majority of people reading this I assume went through the exact same heart-in-mouth feelings as we did! When the final whistle blew and Ireland lifted the trophy the singing blasted the rafters, so much so that we were eventually warned that if we did not stop singing men with AK-47s would be coming down to quieten us...one more blast of Molly Malone and we were gone. Two days of serious flaking followed as we waited for our Laos visas to arrive. We were heading for the islands in the south of Laos, a place called Si Phan Don, with our one and only mission being the sighting of the rare Irrawaddy River Dolphins. It did mean however that we had to break our journey up into two stints - forcing us to spend a night in the, for want of a better phrase, the ass crack of Cambodia - Stung Treng, an outpost town about the size of my foot - the only bright point being a nice sunset over the Mekong before a storm rolled into town and washed the place out.

As we left the next morning to attempt a dubious border crossing in to Laos Gareth and I looked at each other - "Hey, whats the best thing about Stung Treng? Leaving it,"

Thankfully the border crossing went smooth enough, a $1 dollar "greasing" either side of the barrier and we were through. So our short but enjoyable stint in Cambodia was over - Bang straw lang oon!