Siem Reap and Angkor Wat - The Temple of all Temples

The past few days have been a blur of travel. February 3 we left Chiang Mai for Siem Reap, Cambodia and basically traveled for 24 hours straight by bus, taxi and tuk-tuk. The border crossing was less than fantastic, and anyone crossing at Poipet, I suggest you go with someone who has done it before.

Arriving in Siem Reap was not as I expected. At first there are a ton of huge fancy hotels. It's not really what I assumed Cambodia to look like. Once you get past those hotels, the town really comes alive. We decided to stay at a guesthouse in the heart of the backpacker area and near the day market. The town of Siem Reap is pretty cute if you take the time to walk around and check things out. The markets are an experience in and of themselves, and we had our first real "local"dining experience at a Khmer restaurant. The beef with pineapple was pretty fantastic.

Our tuk-tuk driver Vanna picked us up for our first day at Angkor Wat and the first temple we saw, Bayon, was stunning. The stone carvings are so intricate, it makes all the glittery wats in Bangkok look tacky. Bayon is famous for its smiling Buddhas covering the outside. To be honest, all the temples became a blur after awhile, and I couldn't name all of them if I tried. What we took from it was the amount of work and dedication the Cambodian people have for their temples. It's impressive.

The last temple we saw the first day was the famous Angkor Wat temple. We also tried to see sunset, but it ended up being underwhelming due to heavy haze. That night for dinner we went out for good old American pizza at Happy Herb's. Supposedly there's a little something ëxtra"in the pizza, but I didn't feel anything.

The next day we woke up at 4:30 am for sunrise over Angkor Wat. Also not super impressive, but I'm surprised we got up for it. Another day of viewing temples in the Angkor Complex followed. Check out my Flickr if you want to see temple pictures. That night we went to Wat Bo area, which has really cute restaurants. We treated ourselves to a fancy dinner ($10 US for each of us - that's spending quite a bit). We're waking up early on Monday for the Superbowl so we headed to bed early again. One of these nights we have to check out the nightlife! We've just been too exhausted every other night.