Cambodia - Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

After a 5 hour bus journey from Bangkok I made to the the Thai-Cambodia border crossing. The border crossing is as bad as the Lonelyplanet describes. We had to content with moto drivers, tuk tuk drivers, tour guides and tourist "officials" all telling us that we couldn't get our visa at the border and that they could bring us to somewhere we could get one. Eventually we get half way through the border and find the official desk for buying your visa and then we have to bribe the official to get our visa. The scams, bribes, requests for tips and begging continued up until we got to our guesthouse. I even had to lie to the tuk tuk driver to say that I had already booked and paid for the guesthouse as he did not want to take us there instead wanted to take us to his friends guesthouse!

The next day we hired bicycles from the guesthouse and cycled to Angkor. We got there at 8am and it was already very busy mostly with people traveling by tuk tuk. It opens at 5am so we actually got there late.

Entrance to Angkor

We spent the day exploring the various temples. The temples were as I expected but what I was not expecting was the extend to which tourism has taken over. Walking around Siem Reap you are constantly hassled by moto drivers, tuk tuk drivers, various stall owners all trying to sell you something or take you somewhere. For some reason I thought Angkor would be different, maybe because it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site but it was worse. You had all of the above fighting for your attention but you also had children, lots of them either begging or trying to sell you something or convince you to come to a particular restaurant.

View of the moat surrounding Angkor Wat

View from inside the temple