The Temples

We visited about five spectacular temples at Angkor Wat yesterday in the lovely hot and humid weather. The temples are about a 20 minute ride from our hostel and we took a tuk-tuk (a Cambodian taxi) that cost $15 to hire for the entire day (the admission fee to Angkor Wat is $20 each for the day). We began our temple journey at 9am and saw Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Phrom (the temple in the jungle) and a few others. By 3pm, we were ready to head back to the pool at the hostel to cool off. Our driver could not understand that we didn't want to continue visiting temples and stay for sunset (sunset was 3 hours away!). We convinced him that we were fine not seeing the sunset and that maybe we'd see it tomorrow. "But how?" he asked knowing that we had only purchased one-day passes. "How will you see the sunset tomorrow when you only have one day passes?". Walter and I were with a British woman who is also staying at the hostel and he wasn't as worried about her missing the sunset because she had purchased a 3-day pass. He was very sweet and we assured him we did not feel like we were missing out on anything.

Immediately upon returning to the hostel, we jumped in the pool and cooled off. At this time of the year, it's hot but nothing close to March or April when temperatures reach 110 degrees. For our driver, this heat was nothing (he was wearing a long sleeve shirt!). At around 7pm, we headed out to the Old Market part of town that is across the Siem Reap River from our hostel and had a delicious dinner at a fancy Khmer restaurant (the bill came to $22 with drinks, appetizers and entrees -- Wow!). That is considered very expensive here -- most of the travelers that we're run into here at the hostel have allotted themselves a daily budget of $10-$15 for food and lodging.

Today, we're planning to bike around Siem Reap and explore a bit more. I want to find a bakery that we walked by on our first day here...I need cake:-). No dessert for going on three weeks is very hard for me!!!

We leave tomorrow morning at 6am to catch a boat to Phnom Penh (about a six hour ride).