We're in Cambodia

Well, we've made it to the second country on our list - Cambodia.

We flew into Siem Reap international airport early on 25 March. I was grateful for the US dollars I received as my going away present from work when we arrived at the airport as we only had a handful of ringgits and both the ATMs at the airport were broken. Everything works on US dollars here.

They don't use US coins though - once you get down below US$1 you go to Cambodian Riel (4000R to US$1) which is quite confusing. When I get change from the shopkeepers I just have to hope that they aren't ripping me off as it takes too long for me to work out how much the handful of 100R, 500R and 1000R notes that I have been given translates to in US cents!

We have apparently arrived in Siem Reap in the middle of the dry season - the temperatures are scorching and there is dust everywhere. Thankfully our hostel has air conditioning. It is a pretty good deal actually. It is US$15 per night and has ensuite bathroom with hot water, a tv with cable, free internet and a pool. The only downside was that on our first night we saw a mouse in our room and we had to change rooms - but hey, you can't have everything right? It is so weird watching the cable here - they even have an Australian channel. Last night we got to watch the the Lions win their first game of the AFL season - random!! It also has "Aerobics Oz-Style", "Home and Away" and "Getaway".

The thing that everyone does around here is obviously go to see the amazing temples which were created at the height of the Khmer empire about 1000 years ago. We met an older Australian traveller in the hostel who hooked us up with his tuk-tuk driver and we hired him to take us out to the temples. It is very expensive to visit the temples. You can either get a one day (US$20), three day (US$40) or seven day (US$60) pass. Unfortunately the days all run consecutively so you can't really have a rest day in between.

We opted for the three day pass which we thought would give us enough time to see most of the more important temples in the area. Well, after three days of starting at 8.30 and finishing somewhere between 4.30 and 6.00 we are exhausted!!! There are just soooooo many temples here and each of them is different and amazing in its own way. We started with some of the smaller temples on the first day. On the second day we did the popular ones - Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm and on the third day we did a few of the more distant temples and went back to Angkor Wat for another look (it is massive). It is hard to capture the temples in photographs - often their scale is just so big that you can't fit them in the frame. Also, the carving that is all over most of them is hard to pick up in photos, especially as some of it is showing signs of age. Nevertheless, we managed to take over 500 photos over the three days and we have put some of them into the Cambodia photo album for people to check out.

I loved travelling on the tuk-tuk and seeking the way that people lived around Siem Reap. Lots of people live very close to the road so there is a lot to see and our trips each day were really interesting. There are so many people around the temples who try to sell you photocopied guide books, silk scarves, cold drinks, postcards and bracelets. Lots of them are kids - they are really cute and great sellers as they just won't leave you alone! Their English is also amazing when you consider that some of them look as young as 5 or 6! They always ask where you are from and when you say "Australia" they say "Australia - capital Canberra, 22 million people, 'G'day Mate'"! They can do it for pretty much any country - even Fiji! Sometimes it's pretty sad to see how many kids are out selling as it means that they are obviously not in school and I'm not sure whether it helps them or harms them to buy their goods. Nevertheless, we have seen plenty of tourist walking around with bamboo bracelets up to their elbows who are obviously a soft touch where the kids are involved!!

Siem Reap is a pretty big city - apparently home to about 1 million Cambodians. There are obviously plenty of tourists here - Angkor Wat and Bayon were crawling with tourists and it is currently the low season for tourists. There are a tonne of bars here along a street aptly called "Pub Street" and the alcohol is really cheap. Some beers are as little as US$0.50. I think Paul is wishing that we had a bit more money to spend in the bars but most nights all we can afford is a bowl of US$1 noodle soup. We've been getting out breakfast from the bakery (which sells everything at half price after 8.00pm) for about US$1 but we've still been going over budget every day because of the temples. The tuk-tuk was $US12 per day but on two of the days we went off the main temple trail to see some more out of the way stuff so it ended up costing us $US48 for the three days. Obviously these expenses have totally stuffed our budget - we'll have to get back on track pretty quick smart!

Now that we've finished we have to have a few very cheap days to catch up. Overall, for the 40 days in Malaysia over which I recorded my expenses I averaged AU$40 per day. We started off averaging about AU$30 but the Kinabalu trip and the longhouse trip bumped our costs up significantly. Also, we are still waiting to be charged for part of the Kinabalu trip so that will make a difference when we finally get charged. Cambodia is likely to be a little more expensive than Malaysia because we have to use the US dollar all the time and a lot of things are not as cheap as we expected. To stay below AU$30 per day we can only spend about US$20 which is going to make it hard. - N.