Our plane to Siem Reap duly pulled off the stand (airport
speak for reversing) but soon the captain announced there was a fault and we
would have to wait for maintenance.
After a short while it was decided that the plane wasn’t fit to fly and
we would have to wait another hour. So
unfortunately, by the time we got to
Siem Reap, it was dark but nevertheless the drive to the hotel went right past
Angkor Wat so we had an idea of where it was.
Hotel Tara Angkor is fantastic and the staff are really
lovely and friendly, nothing is too much trouble. It’s our 13th Wedding Anniversary on 5th February
and when we got to the room there were rose petals on the bed, flowers, fruit
and a lovely cake. There were also rose
petals in a full bath of water, very sweet but quite messy and made it look
more like a blood bath.
What we didn’t really appreciate before we came was that
that there are numerous temples in the region, Angkor Wat being the biggest one
and its main claim to fame is that it’s the biggest religious ruin/monument in
the world.
So as well as that we saw quite a few others but it has to
be said, after a while they all merge into one. But the highlights for me most definitely were the entrance
gates at Angkor Thom
and the overgrown ruins at Ta Prohm, although the
restoration work made it slightly less enchanting. This ruined temple was apparently featured in
one of the Lara Croft Tomb Raider films and Angelina Jolie is said to have
fallen in love with Cambodia – I can certainly see why.
As you can imagine, life for many people in Cambodia is very hard. Whilst hawkers aren’t allowed in the temple complex,
the children of hawkers clearly are, but they are mostly very sweet kids who
take “no” quite well. I faced a constant
dilemma as to whether to take photos of such kids or not and, if I did, should I buy
from them or give them some money? I
have no fixed answer, it just depends on the situation, one little girl was
just offering a bunch of wild flowers and even hard-hearted Ian couldn’t say no
and gave her a Dollar!
We were also taken to a landmine museum run by the foremost landmine de-commissioner in the country but didn’t go around it because quite frankly we didn’t need/want to see examples of what these dreadful devices can do. We were more than happy to donate our entrance fee to help them continue their work and also to care for the victims.
Got to cut the blog short now, internet access is so poor it's taken over an hour to get this uploaded and now Ian's having one of his famous sneezing fits !!!!!