Siem Riep (Angkor)

Back again, don't worry... Did you miss me? No, I thought not. So sit up straight and listen there will be a test later.

Siem Riep is 7km away from the Temples of Angkor and is pretty touristy as Cambodia goes - lots of Ex-Pat bars and restaurants and more working girls than you could shake a stick (or anything else for that matter) at.

The temples themselves are of course breathtaking, especially Angkor Wat the main temple, but with about 50 other temples it is a place you can explore forever. I belted around the place on a decrepit old chinese bike, I was racing the tuk-tuk and bus drivers and managed to win most times. The Cambodians on mopeds were in stiches laughing at me overtaking buses at 40kmh. One came up to me and said "You very strong man". Damn right. Legs were in bits the next day though...

I was joined in Siem Riep with a large Viking from northern Sweden - Mr. Mikael Olsson. He had just come from Australia, via Bangkok and I was hoping he would be too tired to drink... No such luck, 6 hours and a couple of gallons of beers later I begged him to let me go to bed...

The next day we toured Angkor, I being the excellent tour guide having been there the day before. The beauty of Angkor is only slightly spoiled by the hundreds of cold drink / postcard / flute / banana / pineapple / scarf / thingymijig sellers. They scream at you when you leave a temple "Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiir, you wanna buy cold drink siiiiiiiiiiir?". Their internal codex means that the first person to scream at you gets your custom, so the nice ladies have near superhuman vision - only part of your right foot has to be visible from about 300 meters of their vantage point and they will start screaming at you. You can try and put them off, but their answers are razor sharp - "You want water", "No, I have some thank you", "Your water not cold", "I like warm water, it's good for the stomach", "No, you lying, you want nice cold water, verrrrrrrrrry cheap, only 2000 Riel", "I'm a poor student, I can't afford it", "You no student, you too old". "Oh fuck it, give me a water", "See I knew you want cold water"...