Today's entry takes us much further afield from Siem Reap than previously. A very unvisited temple ruin based on the floor plan of Angkor Wat. The journey there itself, life yesterday, was once again interesting. We continued the competion for the ridiciculous transportation of goods... pictured below: two men carrying a fridge on a motorbike; people hanging out of the side of a pick-up truck and hundreds of chicks on the back of a motorbike.
Again, we say a multitude of scenes that seemed typical to Cambodia. One man was making sure that his seed made it to Siem Reap. Pictured in the centre is one of those "petrol stations" - can you see the pump at the side? The beast was too expensive and hefty for our driver to want to be pumped there. Of-course, you can also count the three of us trundling around in our tuk tuk.
The journey was quite long for a tiny little tuk-tuk, so we occupied ourselves with games, including an excellent gurning contest. Pictured is the winner... can you guess who it is?
The ruined temple were were going to see was Beng Melea. This is truly ruined and overgrown in jungle. You can hear the jungle animals crying in the distance, and we even had warnings of snakes. We were one of only two sets of tourists that we saw there! We were outnumbered by tour guides trying to tout themselves to us... this old lady followed us around for ages trying to give advice - she didn't understand that we WANTED to explore and get lost in the ruinous expanse!
A pleasing start was the lily-pad river at the entrance.. but once we got in, it was rubble, tumbled carvings and forest! It waS a true adventure. You can see from the pictures that it wasn't a case of lovely stroll around the ruins - we had to work hard for our exploration.
So we did! We wanted to rough it and find our way through the ruins like proper explorers... which of us in the pictures looks most like Lara Croft? The scenese shown were not atypical of the clambering and climbing we had to do. Some of you will probably be shocked by the lengths we went to to get up high - we were allowed to climb all over the ruins and I could not resist a Bruce Forsythe pose, though it was a nerve-wracking climb up and down off the post!
We had to be careful not to go out of the bounds of the temple (luckily there was a tumbled wall to help us), since the area has had some mine-field clearance activity in recent years.
The day ended with our usual combination of swim followed by supper at Mimis, and she gave us a heartwarming goodbye!
Again, we say a multitude of scenes that seemed typical to Cambodia. One man was making sure that his seed made it to Siem Reap. Pictured in the centre is one of those "petrol stations" - can you see the pump at the side? The beast was too expensive and hefty for our driver to want to be pumped there. Of-course, you can also count the three of us trundling around in our tuk tuk.
The journey was quite long for a tiny little tuk-tuk, so we occupied ourselves with games, including an excellent gurning contest. Pictured is the winner... can you guess who it is?The ruined temple were were going to see was Beng Melea. This is truly ruined and overgrown in jungle. You can hear the jungle animals crying in the distance, and we even had warnings of snakes. We were one of only two sets of tourists that we saw there! We were outnumbered by tour guides trying to tout themselves to us... this old lady followed us around for ages trying to give advice - she didn't understand that we WANTED to explore and get lost in the ruinous expanse!
A pleasing start was the lily-pad river at the entrance.. but once we got in, it was rubble, tumbled carvings and forest! It waS a true adventure. You can see from the pictures that it wasn't a case of lovely stroll around the ruins - we had to work hard for our exploration.
So we did! We wanted to rough it and find our way through the ruins like proper explorers... which of us in the pictures looks most like Lara Croft? The scenese shown were not atypical of the clambering and climbing we had to do. Some of you will probably be shocked by the lengths we went to to get up high - we were allowed to climb all over the ruins and I could not resist a Bruce Forsythe pose, though it was a nerve-wracking climb up and down off the post!
We had to be careful not to go out of the bounds of the temple (luckily there was a tumbled wall to help us), since the area has had some mine-field clearance activity in recent years.
