Banteay Srei and Kbal Spean

We have walked a fair deal of the city of Siem Reap, back streets and major boulevardes. Quite dusty and hot even wandered around a 700 year old temple, as if we weren't going to do enough of that over the next few days.

  After Saturday's wanderings and buying a Japanese Hotcho square tip kitchen knife from Citadel Knives, we wandered back to the hotel pool for some relax time and lunch.

We have been trying to work out exactly how to plan our survey of Angkor Wat. The place is massive and there are many aspects to it.  We decided to leave Angkor Wat for last and take in a few of the more remote temples and sights first of all.  So off to Banteay Srei and Kbak Spean about 30km and 50km northeast of Siem Reap. Got the hotel to organise a car and driver, because neither of us felt like going in a tuk-tuk for 100kms.

We had to purchase a ticket to get entry to various temples 1,3 or 7 day ticket cost $20/$40/$60
We chose the 3 day ticket each, which is printed with your photo on it and must be shown at each sight you visit.

Banteay Srei

 Many beautiful rock carvings in very fine detail.  It was "rediscovered" in the late 1890's by some French dudes, and after clearing the rainforest away restoration commenced in the 1930's.

 The temple is dated to around 1000

It was blisteringly hot in the sun but there was much shade available as well, we sat down for a cup of coffee afterwards and this helped put things right.  After an hour or so we headed further north to Kbal Spean - the river of a thousand linga's

 It was an easy 1500m walk up the hill into rainforest and rock formations within a National Park.

 Vishnu Shiva and those round things are linga's

 We were sweating up a storm, pants and shirts were soaked through and we had drank two bottles of water each.  The Biodiversity Conservation centre was closed on Sunday. Boo.

Then headed back had some lunch -delicious noddle soup with vegetables and spring rolls. Back into the car, stopped at a landmine museum but the heat had taken its toll on us, I couldn't really relate and we had seen similar displays on this topic in Saigon, Phong Nga and Hanoi. Back to the hotel!

Plan on dinner at the Golden Palm tonight.