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As our original 30day visas for Thailand were due to expire imminently, we decided on a visa run to Cambodia. This is quite a common trip to do as it is the closest border crossing to Bangkok and can be combined with visiting the temples of Angkor Wat, built between the 9th and 12th centuries, and often called the 8th wonder of the World. The thought of leaving our hassle-free life and apartment with all the mod cons to go back on the road again was not all that appealing... it's made us worry about the end of the month when we will have to pack up our home and once again be persons of no fixed abode. However, we managed to wrench ourselves away and were on a bus to the border at Aranya Prathet by 7.30am.

From some research we did into the journey before leaving, we had discovered that the route is notorious for scams – the internet being awash with stories of fake border crossings, extortion and just plain rip-off's at every opportunity. As such, we were slightly disappointed to be the lone farangs on our bus as we were hoping for some strength in numbers at the border. This first section of the journey was fairly uneventful though and we pretty much slept all the way in our comfortable air conditioned bus to Aranya.

After around 4½ hours, the bus pulled up in a dusty scrub field where there were a bunch of tuk-tuks waiting eagerly and the bus driver informed us that this was our stop. We were pleased that we managed to agree a price lower than we were expecting to be taken to the border and satisfied that we seemed to be following the directions and signs to the border crossing. Once there, the tuk tuk driver took us straight into the side of an office where we were greeted by a friendly Cambodian immigration official. We were immediately slightly confused that we were in Cambodian immigration before passing through the Thai departure, but having been shown identity badges we duly followed instructions to fill in all the necessary forms which had all the authentic stamps on them. Having completed all the forms, the man then asked for a fee which was more than double what were expecting. As we protested and asked further questions we became increasingly suspicious and tried to leave whereupon the nice, friendly official started to become quite aggressive. It was all a bit unpleasant but we did manage to leave and sure enough further up the road came to the real border crossing and Thai departure point.

The incident served to wake us up after our long bus journey and put our guards up. We were pleased to find the Cambodian immigration point with a section for visas on arrival indicating the $20 fee we were expecting. Having obtained our visas (our passports are starting to look quite colourful now), we carried on through immigration and onto a free shuttle bus to Poipet bus station – one of the Cambodian officials seemed to latch onto us despite our protestations and assurances that we would not need his help or any services; his laughable response being that he was going to the bus station to go to the toilet! Needless to say, he tried to demand money when we were boarding our bus to Siem Reap.

The journey from Poipet to Siem Reap only took around 2 hours along a very straight, smooth road – in the past this section of the road was in terrible repair and the uncomfortable, bumpy journey could take up to 6 hours. Apparently, this was because of pay-off's from an airline which runs flights between Bangkok and Siem Reap! The bus did make one stop on the way at a small roadside shop where we were bombarded with drink and food offers as we stepped off the bus. Having been told that we had half an hour, we walked slightly further along the road to have a look at the other options but were quickly herded back to the shop where we stopped being told we had to stay close to the bus so it wouldn't leave without us.

As we expected, the bus stopped on the outskirts of Siem Reap and we had to get a tuk-tuk into the centre. The Cambodian flavour of tuk-tuks are actually motorbikes with big trailers attached to the back. Having agreed a fair price with the man who organised the tuk-tuk to take us to the main market area, we climbed in only for him to join us – again despite our protestations that we had accommodation and did not need anything he insisted on coming along, explaining that he was needed to “show the driver the way”. Soon after we started the driver pulled in at a roadside stall saying he needed gas – we were slightly confused as this was certainly no petrol station but it turned out that they sell fuel in bottles on the side of the road. Having emptied a litre of the yellowish liquid into his tank, we were on the way again. As expected, our man started on a hard-sell, trying to convince us to use him as our driver for the next few days. As we continued to decline his offer, saying that we were not sure of our plans and refusing to give him our accommodation details (so that he could find us later), things again turned nasty. We explained that we didn't want to play any games and just wanted dropped at our destination as we had asked. He continued to get angrier and more aggressive and started to intimidate us by drawing his finger across his throat and asking whether we had heard of the Khmer Rouge. Thankfully, this was just as we arrived at the market and we were relieved to get off and leave.

Slightly exhausted, we were happy to have a drink and recover in a bar on 'pub street', the main tourist drag in Siem Reap. We had survived the journey but it had not been a pleasant introduction to Cambodia and had left us feeling very defensive with our guards up. We appreciate that Cambodia is a very poor country struggling to recover from a terrible past and can understand that tourism being one of their main industries may lead to the temptation to extract as much money as possible from rich tourists. However, it was hard not to reflect on Nepal which, like Cambodia, is on the UN's list of Least Developed Countries and yet the people seemed to us, almost without exception, to be very genuine. There may have been a few cases where they would try to overcharge foreigners and make a quick dollar but we never encountered the same game playing and cynical deception.

Thankfully, it turned out that getting here was much harder work than being here and having checked into a very pleasant guesthouse recommended by friends we enjoyed our first evening in Siem Reap. The town is set around a slow moving river and has many charming French colonial buildings. Pub street is predictably enough a line of bars and restaurants but it has a much more laid-back and relaxing feel that Kao San in Bangkok. We tried our first Khmer food with a couple of curries which were very tasty although not all that spicy and a delicious, fresh cabbage salad. Being the rock 'n' roll folk that we are, and the rigours of the journey taking their toll, we were in bed and fast asleep by 10 o'clock!

Having woken up at 6am, we had some breakfast (Drew enjoyed a quirky interpretation of sausage, egg and beans) and rented a couple of bikes to go and tour the temples of Angkor Wat. It is around 6km to Angkor Wat from the centre of Siem Reap but thankfully it was still nice and cool and relatively quiet on the roads. It was slightly wounding to hand over $80 (2-3days budget!) for our tickets. We were slightly sceptical when an official led us straight past all the queues to an empty booth, expecting another scam, but were pleasantly surprised as our tickets were handed over with no requests for extra money.

The first thing that you come to as you arrive at the temple complex is the massive moat around Angkor Wat which provided some beautiful reflections of the surrounding trees in the morning sun. Somewhat against all our reflexes, we turned and headed away from the main Angkor Wat temple to go on the grand tour (26km). We had decided to explore some of the smaller temples on the first day and save the big hitters of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom for the next. We were making good progress although Heather was a little worried by a slightly flat front tyre when there was a sudden pop and loud hiss as her back tyre deflated completely. Fearing the worst, we were trying not to be too upset at the thought of wheeling the bikes 10km back to Siem Reap without seeing a single temple, when a passing young lad on a bike spotted the problem and motioned further ahead along the road. Sure enough, round the corner we spotted an air-compressor and a tyre hanging in a tree. As soon as we arrived, a young boy not yet in his teens got going on fixing the puncture. He was very quick and efficient, using a flame to seal the patch and had the tyre fixed and all four of our tyres fully inflated in no time, and all for $1. Minutes later, we were cycling along almost forgetting the disaster that nearly befell us, our bikes feeling better than before. Now we knew what we were looking for, we spotted lots of tyres hanging in the trees at the roadside; the rental bikes are typically quite long in the tooth, and running repairs are obviously commonplace.

One of the first main temples that we came to, Banteay Kdei, was relatively small and tumble-down with the towers held together by ropes tied around them and some pillars resembling a game of Jenga going badly wrong. Straight away, the amazing carvings in the stone caught our attention and had us taking hundreds of photos. The detail and expressions on the figures was quite beautiful.

The morning developed a very pleasant rhythm of cycling interspersed with temple exploring, each providing a welcome break from the other. We were cycling through some lovely rural countryside surrounded by lush tropical forest. We enjoyed all of the temples which each had their own personality and features – amazing carvings, being able to climb up high for beautiful views, large ponds or being overtaken by trees and roots. We had been expecting big crowds and were surprised by how quiet all of the temples were.

Hungry and starting to feel a little exhausted in the mid-day sun, we decided to stop for lunch. At every temple stop, there are at least a couple of young kids who come running up trying to sell postcards, water etc. When we stopped for lunch, we were mobbed by around half a dozen young girls shouting the numbers of their restaurants and imploring us to go with them. It is very hard not to feel sad at the situation of these small children who are missing out on school to be used as bait for tourists – people are less likely to refuse a beautiful, young child with puppy dog eyes than an older person who you can reason with. When we asked the girl whose restaurant we ended up in whether she went to school, she told us she had been that morning, but were not entirely convinced. We saw other children changing tactics when a tourist refused to buy their souvenirs, switching to saying “I'm very poor and don't have enough money to go to school”. Whether any money handed over goes towards their education is of course less than certain. Probably a vicious circle, the very fact they are making money being all the more reason for the family to keep them out of school to badger the tourists.

After lunch we were feeling quite tired, almost templed-out, and with bottoms getting sore we were slightly dismayed to see we were only just half way round the route. We realised that we had maybe made the rookie error of wearing ourselves out trying to see too much in one day. We visited the nearby temple and found we were eyeing up suitable places to have a quick snooze rather than really appreciating it! Having seen most of the temples, we started heading for home. It was slightly hard to motor straight past Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat visible from the road but our sore bottoms kept us pedalling through. Trying to take a short cut we found ourselves on a bad section of road which did nothing to help our behinds and it was a long and bumpy ride back.

Having cycled 30-40km and visited around 10 temples, we were rewarded by an amazing dinner in a Khmer Kitchen which went straight in as one of top ten meals during our trip. We had a delicious, fragrant Khmer chicken curry with pumpkin and coconut and some vegetable Amok which was less rich but spicy and very tasty.

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