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After much deliberation and feeling very tired we managed to drag ourselves out of bed and onto a tuk-tuk around 5.30am to go and watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. We realised that this is a very popular thing and were not too surprised by the hordes of people headed in the same direction. Walking across the bridge over the moat and through the main gates, you get a sense of the awesome size of Angkor Wat, and the huge grounds mean that people disperse fairly quickly. We were pleased to find a quiet spot to watch as the sky changed colour over the temple reflected in a small pool. In the first light we went for a wander around the temple grounds - we had gone to the right of the main entrance walkway as we had come in and were surprised on walking over to the other side to find hundreds of people crowded round the corresponding pool, jostling and holding cameras in the air to try and get the perfect snap. We can see why people make the effort to get up to the temple for sunrise as it was quite beautiful in the morning light. Maybe we have been spoilt by some of the other spectacular sunrises we have been treated to, but one of the main appeals of the early morning expedition seemed to be that in the dim light you could not see all the scaffolding on the temple!

Having had a walk around, our rumbling stomachs led us back to Siem Reap for breakfast and to relax for the morning. We had a bit of a better look around the town, going to the lively market – the Cambodians are quite famous for their resourcefulness and they use all meats including toads and snakes and body parts including tongue and bladder in their food. Not quite to our liking, we were happy to stick to veg and a little chicken.

Having rested, we boldly went and picked up a tandem to explore the main temples of Angkor Wat and Thom for the afternoon. We had a couple of false starts – out of the 3 tandems that they had, we tried out all three to find one that worked. It was an interesting challenge to get the hang of cycling a tandem in the busy traffic around the centre of Siem Reap. As anyone who has cycled a tandem probably knows, it is not hard to keep going but starting and stopping take some practice! With sensitive steering it was quite a tricky but fun ride. Unfortunately, Drew's attempt at the front steering coincided with a long 4x4 convoy heading towards us on a narrow road with the people stuck behind trying to overtake which got a bit hairy at times! However, the tandem certainly got people's attention and we had lots of folk shouting hello and waving, including passing motorbikes loaded with whole families (maximum we saw was family of 5 on one bike).

We really enjoyed looking round Angkor Wat which is an incredible structure covered in amazing carvings. We were exploring the temple in the midday sun when all the big tour groups tend to retreat for lunch. This meant that it was very quiet, and the dark corridors stayed cool and pleasant even when it was baking outside. One of the outer walls is totally covered with detailed carvings depicting the Ramayana stretching for hundreds of metres. The preservation and restoration of all of this is obviously a huge, ongoing task and while we were there they were trying to improve the drainage and prevent water from damaging the carvings. It is an amazing place and you could spend days wandering and exploring it in full but we were content to see what we could in the couple of hours that we had before moving on.

Angkor Thom is made up of several different parts or sections stretching over an huge area. Our favourite site was the Bayon, a temple covered with over 200 massive faces carved into walls and towers. We were lucky to get there in the late afternoon sun, the light conferring even more personality on the innumerable faces that cover every surface. It was a really beautiful, memorable place to visit.

Typically, Heather had her eye on the highest point in the area, a hill just outside of Angkor Thom. Hills and high points are very limited as apparently virtually the whole of Cambodia used to be submerged in a massive river estuary (the Mekong) which gradually filled up with silt over time creating the present land. With the sun getting low and with one eye on our watches – we didn't want to end up riding the tandem back in the dark – we went to climb up quickly and get on the way home. However, we didn't realise that it is one of the most popular sites in Angkor Wat to watch the sunset and we had to join in a huge, slow, flow of people heading to the same point. The path winds around the hill gradually climbing up through the jungle until you emerge to a temple at the top with spectacular views over the countryside and Angkor Wat. The temple was crawling with people perched on every surface; however, we didn't hang around as we were anxious about the time and didn't want to be caught in the queues and ensuing traffic as everyone descended after the sunset.

We made it back safely in the fading light and were pleased to hand over the tandem and refresh ourselves with the cheap glasses of draught Angkor beer that were widely available. We had a fun dinner in a street stall which specialised in barbecues where you had a conical bowl with a rim around the bottom placed on hot coals. You barbecued your meat on the cone and the rim around the bottom was filled with broth which you used to cook vegetables and noodles. With some fresh, spicy sauces, this all made for a delicious hands on meal.

Our visa run was completed with a blissfully uneventful, scam free journey to Bangkok and we were very pleased to get back to our lovely apartment and cool down in the swimming pool. We are hoping that we will be able to survive without the luxuries we have been enjoying when we have to move on in the New Year and go back to a nomadic lifestyle. It might be quite hard!

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