The bus ride to Siem Reap takes us through a small village or "kampung". The village is a small fishing village but given the dry season, the water levels are low and reveal that the the houses are built on stilts 2 or more meters high. As we walk through the streets seeing the smoked fish which the locals make to preserve and eat during the dry season, children run up around us yelling 'hello' and 'goodbye', the only two english words they know.
We make our way towards the river and hop on a boat for a boat ride. As we make our way down the river, we see locals in the water farming water hyacinth plants and when we enter the delta itself, we see another village built on the water with its residents using boats for transportation and children jumping into the water to cool off. 
We arrive in Siem Reap soon after and then it's time for dinner in the 'city'. Siem Reap's city has been designed for tourists with it's flashing lights and exorbitant prices - think $5 a meal instead of $3.50.
The next morning, we begin our temple touring by heading to the temple city - Angkor Thom. We make our way to the the largest Buddhist temple on site - Bayon - some of us on foot, some of us on elephant. While we wait for those riding the elephants to arrive, we take the opportunity to feed them bananas. Bayon sits in the center of the city and is decorated with four faces of Buddha. These ruins are in fairly good shape and we get the climb up and down the steps of the ruin.
After lunch, we visit three more temples, one of which is Banyan Wat. Banyan Wat is famous for appearing in the Tomb Raider movies with trees growing in and around the structure. While some of the trees have damaged parts of the temple, some of the trees are now holding up other parts.
The weather is hot and by the end of the day, we head back to our hotel for some much needed rest. We cool off in the pool, grab a quick dinner at the hotel restaurant and then it's bed time for a 4.45am start tomorrow to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat.
The next morning, we meet our group and local guide at 4.45am in the hotel lobby to find that our group leader is MIA. The local guide calls his room and he shows up shortly with sunglasses in tow, hung over. We arrive at Angkor Wat and score some primo seats and await the sunrise. It was not as spectactular as we had hoped but it was still definately pretty.
We climb into a bus soon after the sun is up to visit another temple 40 mins away called the "Lady Temple" or "Temple of Women", formally known as Ta Som Khmer Temple.
In the afternoon, we come back to visit the famed Angkor Wat, this time touring the inside of the temple. Angkor Wat is the largest Hindu Temple in Cambodia and has three distinct levels. The view from the upper most level is exhilerating as we are able to see across the Angkor Wat grounds, all the way to the main gate.
After Angkor Wat, it's back to the hotel to cool off and for lunch. We laze around after that until dinner time, staying out of the 38 degree dry heat of Cambodia.
Dinner is again in the city center at the "Temple Bar". The meal is with a show of traditional Cambodian dances. We eagerly anticipate the event but are disappointed as traditional Cambodia dancing can only be described as fairly tame - pretty, but tame.
After dinner, it's one last shopping effort at the night markets where some of the other aussies and the kiwis get their first taste of a 'fish massage' before it's bed time in preparation for a sort bus ride to our tour leader's home town of Batambang.
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