Cambodia- Siem Reap #1

Ah Cambodia, I'm still in love...
After a surprisingly comfortable almost 6 hour bus ride up here from Phnom Penh on Friday, we're in Siem Reap! A city created pretty much solely for the purpose of being a gatehouse to Angkor Wat, the areas we have seen of Siem Reap are very touristy and have a lot of Western influence. That said, it's awesome here. There is a great vibe about the place, pretty chilled and it feels safe to wander most places. We are yet to 'do the Wats' though, our plan for tomorrow is to get up at 4.30 to see the sun rise over Angkor.
Our first night was spent in a pretty schmick looking place from the outside with barely functioning aircon that made a massive racket all night, dirty towels, a dodgy tv and an early morning wake up from a wailing singing voice somewhere nearby. Needless to say, we have moved now- actually upgraded to a cheaper and much nicer place just down the road- air con is bril (after 2 room changes for the boys to get it going!), tv has a gazillion channels in various languages and for only US$6 we have the luxury of a pool.. great for a cool down in the stinking Cambodian heat!
We were all pretty buggered after our 'entertaining' bus trip, involving too many near misses with other traffic, playing cards on the floor up the front and a hideous Khmer karaoke soundtrack on the TV and had a nice lazy day yesterday to recuperate and check out the town. The markets here are nice and more my style with a good selection of happy pants and souvenirs with a bit more 'culture'. This is not to say that I didn't make use of the rip offs in PP but I'm loving the wooden trinkets, silk scarves and dirty silver jewellery. The three of us girls had a good trawl of the markets while the boys slowly got themselves out of the pool and into town for tea. We have discovered that it's almost impossible to pull Dave out of the pool here- he is seriously a FISH he loves it that much!
Last night we had a bit of a big night of beers and gooood food! We ate at the Khmer Kitchen which just won us all over with amazing pumpkin and coconut soup, fried pumpkin, great staple noodles and chili & basil fish. Seriously, I am putting food in the number one position for reasons why I travel. Learning, history, culture, language- they're up there- but the food, I could write a blog on just that! (Don't worry... I won't... unless someone wants to start paying me to do that, which would be way too good to be true HA)
A few too many drinks later and we were getting our feet eaten by fish! Weird at first, there are plenty of places here where you pay a few dollars to put your feet in a massive fish tank and these little nibblers just eat all the dead skin off! Dee was totally freaked out by even putting her finger in but the rest of us had a good go at it, and Dave and I stayed in for ages having a nice chat to some American travellers, one of which gets paid to write a travel blog (CAREER ENVY!)
We were all a tad seedy this morning but nothing a good baguette with (actual) bacon and eggs and a dip in the pool couldn't fix! Then us girls went and did a Khmer cooking class at the Temple Club, where we learned to cook 3 entrees, mains and desserts and made friends with a nice American family who are also heading to Luang Prabang soon. We were even invited to Mariah's (the daughter and definitely the coolest of the clan) sweet 16th 'party' sometime next week in Laos! Funny but nice to have made contact with some other travellers who will be there when we are. The class was just so good, for US$10 we got a 3 hour class, recipes, free t-shirt and an all-you-can-eat buffet of the food we had just made, even with some leftovers to come home and show the boys, LUCKY for them we are nice! I really am so excited to be learning more and more about ingredients and methods over here, dinner party at my house sometime... Amok, curry and mango salad anyone?
In case you hadn't noticed by the length of this blog, we have free internet at our guesthouse and are checking our emails/facebooks pretty much daily. I'm not sure how simple it'll be in Laos but there will definitely be another update sometime before then with a rundown of our big day of Wats (temples) tomorrow.
We are all safe, well and as much as I can't speak for others I know I can say that we're all loving this trip to bits.
Time to go upstairs and join the card game that is most likely in process.. :)

PS Rob and Richard- the many years of what Michael likes to call 'shits and giggles' have taught me well.. take anything he says with a grain of salt ;) he's a great guide for the most part but today when he came out with "Dave and I made friends with the President of Cambodia" we were a little unsure......