The night was hot, and I slept fitfully. Switched the fan off, then back on again. I was alternately feeling hot flushes and shivers, as the stream of air from the fan hit me in waves. Eventually I managed to manhandle the fan to point in a direction that made the air move, but not directly at me, and I managed to sleep.

Not for long though. At 6:30am we were collected for a boat trip to Siem Reap, home of the temples of Angkor. A minibus took us to the port, where a long, thin boat was waiting. On board, the boat was in chaos. An attempt at allocated seating had been a dismal failure – there were people in our seats, and there were people in their seats, and so on, and there were obviously more people on the boat than there were seats available. We were understandably unimpressed, given that the trip costs $20, a fortune in this part of the world.

Eventually we found seats together in the forward cabin, where two other passengers gave them up, saying it would be cool to sit on the roof. The boat was decorated in fake foliage with plastic covered seats. It was impossible to see out of the windows as they were still covered in the kind of blue plastic film that often covers glass and plastic to protect it during shipping. In this case though, the glass was obviously not a recent upgrade. The film has simply never been removed. For all that though, the boat was fast. In fact, it’s about three times faster than taking the bus.

For much of the early part of the journey, I was convinced that the boat was listing to port. This feeling was strengthened by the fact that I could see only sky through the window on the right, and only water through the one on the left. But no-one else appeared bothered by this so I assumed it was entirely normal.

We arrived to be greeted by the expected circus of guesthouse owners with placards. A quick conference over the Rough Guide resulted in our selecting “Mom’s Guesthouse”, so we located their people and were shown to the appropriate minibus. The bus made several stops on a very roundabout route so that a German couple could decide where to stay.

We headed out to get lunch. The restaurant on the corner of the street where Mom’s was located and the main road was absolutely dreadful and overpriced, but it filled a hole and allowed the girls to concentrate on the next most important necessity after food, namely finding the nearest market. I bought some art for my flat, and browsed the stalls and shops. Admittedly, I was favouring the air conditioned ones, but I wasn’t going to buy anything else anyway.

In the late afternoon we went to Angkor, to buy our passes for the following day. If you buy them after 5pm, you also get the remainder of today as well as tomorrow, so once we’d got the tickets, we headed straight for Angkor Wat.

Angkor is the only reason foreigners come to Siem Reap, and it’s Cambodia’s primary historical treasure. From the 9th to the 15th century, the Khmer empire was a powerful kingdom that at its height stretched across much of modern-day Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. Angkor was the capital of the empire, and is testament to the empire’s vast power and wealth. It’s now Cambodia’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site, and considered one of the most important heritage sites in the world.

Angkor Wat is easily the largest and most impressive of the Angkor temples, built by Suryavarman II (1113-50) during the zenith of the Khmer Empire. It consists of a moat and three galleries, enclosing a central shrine with five spires. We crossed the causeway over the moat, passed through the first gallery, crossed the second causeway through the inner grounds, passed though the second and third galleries, and climbed to the top of the central shrine to watch the sunset.

With magnificent views across the ancient site, where the sun was slowly setting, we sat down with a small group of foreigners to watch. Unfortunately with about 15 minutes to go, our contemplations were interrupted by a curator.

“Close”
“Sorry?”
“Close”

She then repeated the word ‘close’ a further 50 or so times before we finally gave up and descended to watch the sunset from outside the temple.

For dinner we did much better than lunch. The restaurant two doors down from Mom’s, the “Star Rise”, was absolutely fantastic. I had never tried Amok before, but it was just superb. Foreign visitors had been invited to write their greetings on the bare walls, and so we were surrounded by gushing praise for the restaurant, so much that there was no longer any space to write new comments.