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Whilst we were in Siem Reap we visited the famous Angkor Wat temples.  We took a tuk-tuk trip from our hostel which took us around for 1 day visiting the “small tour” route.  The temples were really impressive and it’s amazing to think that they were built so long ago.

My personal favourite of the temples that we visited was Ta Phrom where nature has taken over and through the whole temple there are roots and trees growing everywhere.

We were pretty tired out from all our temple-hopping and climbing the steep temple steps that the next day we checked ourselves into the Golden Banana boutique hotel for a few days of luxury.  We treated ourselves to an hour long traditional Khmer massage that sorted out all those aches and pains and chilling by the pool in the hotel.  It was nice to treat ourselves to a few days luxury after a month of hard travelling!

From Siem Reap we took a bus down to Cambodia’s capital where we spent a few days visiting the Royal Palace (not really worth the visit in my opinion) and the S21 Toul Sleng museum and the killing fields just out of the city.  The museum is an old school that was turned into an interrogation centre and prison during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, from which prisoners were taken to the killing fields to be slaughtered.  It was really quite chilling to imagine what had gone on in these places and for it to be so recent as only 30 or so years ago.

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We crossed the border from Thailand into Cambodia at Poipet and instead of taking the usual tourist route to Siam Reap we decided to visit Battambang.  It was about a 2 hour journey from the border which we travelled by taxi, our first introduction to how the use the car horn in south-east asian countries - basically it is used to tell other road users that you are coming through and they better get out of the way quick!

Battambang is the second largest city in Cambodia but it didn’t feel any bigger to us than a small UK town.  The city spreads out from the Central Market where most of the action is.  We stayed in the Royal hotel which was right beside the market and were able to watch all of the action and the motorbikes whizzing every which way from the rooftop bar.

We took a recommendation from the Lonely Planet and went for dinner in the Smokin’ Pot restaurant to sample some local Cambodian food.  It was so delicious!! I had a vegetable amok which is a coconut milk based red curry with lots of local vegetables and Iain tried the Lok Lak which is Beef with a peppery oyster sauce.  The restaurant advertised cooking classes so spurred on by the delicious meal we had just had we signed up for the following day.

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We ended up spending 9 days in Bangkok waiting for our Vietnam visas to come through (it’s the only visa that you have to make sure that you have in advance of arriving at the border) so managed to see a lot of the city.

We visited some of the many temples that there are in Bangkok to see the many different positions Buddha is cast in: sitting, standing, reclining, emerald (although we couldn’t take any photos of the emerald Buddha).

We also took a day trip to the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market which involved getting up around 5am to be there to get the most of the action.  It is a market on one of the canals about 2 hours from Bangkok and one of the only floating markets still running.  It was a bit touristy and most of the goods were tourist souveneirs and fruit but was good fun.  We took a bus from Bangkok and then changed to a long tail boat when we got close to the market before swapping for a paddle boat to go through the market.

There were so many shopping opportunities in Bangkok with night markets, day markets and the amazing Chattachak Weekend Market which has over 15000 stalls!  It was really difficult to resist the temptation to spend, spend, spend but fortunately the size and space in our backpacks has helped to curb the temptation!

While in Bangkok we stayed in the Hostelling International Hostel HI-Sukhumvit on Sukhumvit Soi 38 which was really good.  It was really clean with friendly staff, a rooftop with cushions to laze about on and even free breakfast thrown in every morning.

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I have to say that Bangkok certainly hasn’t been my favourite city so far.  You get hassled quite a lot by people expecting you to buy something from them so I was quite glad to be moving on to Cambodia once we had successfully got our Vietnam Visas in our passports!

Thinking that we had 2 days left to fit in everything we wanted to do in Tokyo, one day at Disneyland and a visit to the fish market followed by an early night in preparation for our early flight on Wednesday, we noticed that the fish market was closed on the Monday so headed off to Disneyland instead - only to get to the gates and realise that it was sold out due to a National Holiday - Doh!

As we couldn’t get back into the magical kingdom we headed back into central Tokyo and wandered around Akihabara - Electric Town.  It was sensory overload with shop after shop of electrical goods blaring out catchy tunes and tempting us to spend our remaining yens - unfortunately there was no room in the backpacks!

So on Tuesday morning we got up super early and went of to the largest fish market in the world.  There should be a warning sign for sleepy-heads here - there were a few near misses with the carts that speed around the market delivering fresh fish from stall to stall.  It was so interesting to see where all of that fish in Japan actually comes from!  We were surrounded by so many different types of fish but especially eye-catching were the enormous frozen tunas - they were as big as me!

I felt a bit queasy to say the least after walking through a market of fish for about 45 minutes I didn’t think I was going to manage to eat any sushi but after a few walks around the block we stopped into a sushi place where I had the most amazing sushi ever!  It was great to know that this was as fresh as it could ever get - I think that our breakfast could have been auctioned off only an hour or so earlier!

After washing down my sushi with some green tea we headed off on the tokyo metro to Disneyland!  I was pretty excited after the disappointment of not being able to get in the day before.

We managed to get on most rides that we wanted to despite the park being really busy with Japanese people taking an extended holiday.  It rained non-stop from around noon but we didn’t let that dampen our spirits and still managed to sing and dance along with the parade which was Halloween themed.

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Unfortunately the night parade was cancelled due to all of the rain so it was off home exhausted and sleepy to catch a few hours sleep before our flight to Hong Kong the next day…

We are now in Siem Reap in Cambodia. After Japan we stopped over in Hong Kong for 4 days and had great fun hanging out with Aideen even although she tried to kill us with a Saturday morning hike!

From there we flew to Bangkok and spent 9 days waiting for our visas for Vietnam. Then for real adventure we made our way overland from Bangkok to Cambodia. We crossed the border with no hassles on Wednesday and then spent 2 nights in Battambang where we took a Khmer cooking class and went to a circus performance by local under-priviledged children.

We travelled by boat from Battambang to Siem Reap then spent yesterday temple hopping at Angkor Wat.

We have just checked ourselves into a really nice hotel/B&B and had a massage this afternoon then a swim in our pool - luxury after 1 month’s travels!

We’re planning on heading to an internet cafe after dinner so more pics & stories to follow later.

OK - we are in the internet cafe now but there is no usb connections so no photos for now…