Siem Reap - the city

While mostly famous for the temples, Siem Reap was a lot of fun to visit in its own right. Being the off-season for tourism, it was pretty quiet, which we liked. However, there were still a wide range of nice places to explore and go and eat, although it was hard to not feel sorry for some of them when we seemed to be the only customers. One of these was a little local restaurant near our hotel, which had a great range of cheap Cambodian food, as well as some cute little kids who were keen to play with us. We went there twice, and were very impressed. As with Phnom Penh, there was also a restaurant run by the Friends organisation, which trains underprivileged kids in hospitality - after our experience previously we had to try it out. The food was great and we had a really nice chat to the manager about their program. The standout was the chocolate pepper cake, which James claimed was the best chocolate cake he'd ever had. He had the cheek to ask for the recipe, and to our surprise they brought it out for him. The family is now anticipating fun acting as taste testers as he perfects it on our return!

On our first day we did a sunrise tour to Angkor Wat, followed by visits to a few other temples (including breakfast!). It was a great intro to the complex, and we had two more days of visiting to go after that. Having scoped out the lay of the land, we decided to hire bicycles for the next two days, which proved to be a great choice. We got lucky with the weather (and our timing, one day we got back to the cafe next door to our hotel for a milkshake just as it started to bucket down), which helped. Cycling out to the temples and around to some of the many sites meant that we had a lot of flexibility, as well as being a pleasant way to keep moving for the day. We probably did 40 km or so on the bikes each time, and it gave us the option of visiting some of the other tourist attractions in town. the one down side was coming back after one temple visit to find the bikes claimed by a monkey, who was trying to chew everything in sight. After trying to be patient, James ended up taking a more "proactive" approach to getting rid of it, thankfully without any biting. It is apparently a common problem, at the bikeshop, they told us they chew off the saddles on the bikes, and the handlebar covers as well. And they steal the locks, somehow...

In addition to the temples, we went to the APOPO centre, which has a program training rats to detect landmines. It is a huge problem in Cambodia, and elsewhere, with mines from the American war and civil war in Cambodia, as well as more recent conflicts. The rats are an African breed, and are trained in Tanzania before being imported to work in Cambodia. The demonstration was great, and followed by a chance to hold a couple of the rats. Gillian did so, getting extensively licked for her troubles!

We also visited the Angkor Museum, which houses lots of artifacts from temples around Siem Reap and elsewhere. It has a huge collection which is really well presented, along with a pretty comprehensive history of the development of the various temples around Siem Reap. This includes the history of the temples switching between Hinduism (Brahminism) and Buddhism and back, which is also associated with some defacing (literally in the case of many Buddha statues) to emphasise one side or the other - which seems like a great shame.

All in all, we really enjoyed our time in Siem Reap and would happily visit there again. Great food, fantastic temples, interesting history and an accessible town centre make for a perfect tourist storm!