What's what in Angkor Wat

We arrived in Siem Reap yesterday after a real initiation into the process of border crossing! We were feeling quite nervous of it as we've heard really bad reports of boundless scams involving the trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap, and had prayed that it would all go smoothly! After catching a 4 hour bus trip, and then a tuk-tuk taxi (a motorized three-wheeled open air cart sort of thing) to the border, we soon found ourselves being befriended by a Cambodian guy who swore we was only there to protect and help us (as there were ''many thieves, knives, and gangs" at the border that we must be afraid of) and followed us through the border, telling us where to go etc. We were very sceptical of course and knew it must be leading to some thing to benefit him once we'd crossed into Cambodia. We were quite relieved when we were approached by a couple (Thai girl and Austrian guy) as they were looking to share the cost of a taxi with other people. They had both done the trip before and gave us a run down that there were no normal buses at the border and the only way to get to Siem Reap was either by taxi, or 'tourist buses' which are often ridiculously expensive, and also are working together with guesthouses in a most ingenious ploy where they stall leaving from the border, and take the whole day to get you to Siem Reap so that you arrive in the dark, tired and desperate, and they can drop you off at their guesthouse which charges way too much, and you'll have no choice but to stay there, and then they get a cut of course... So anyway this couple turned out to be such an answer to prayer... as we got stamped through passport control, the cambodian guy told us he had a bus waiting for us and he'd take us for free, the Thai girl said no thanks and quickly negotiated in Thai with some motorcycle taxi guys, and we all 4 jumped on the back of 4 motorbikes (with huge backpacks on our bags AND a smaller bag on our fronts!) and sped out of there amongst a mass of approaching taxi drivers who were hussling us and the cambodian dude who was seriously upset we weren't taking his scam bus and kept shouting that it was all a lie and we'd be charged way more if we went with the motorbike taxi's....and it was like a movie really, crazy! Anyway these motorbike guys dropped us off 1 km away, and we were soon surrounded by taxi men again who were all shouting and we didn't really know what was going on but this other couple was sorting it all out, and negotiated a ride to Siem Reap for $30 with this Thai taxi driver, which was a good price apparently, but once we piled into the car, the cambodian taxi drivers started having a fight with our taxi driver as he'd undercut their price and they'd lost the deal, and they wouldn't let him close his drivers door so we could go, and then they were all on their phones phoning their companies that they work for, and the whole thing was just crazy as we had no idea what they were saying, and the thai girl was trying to translate...
Well, very long story but eventually we got out of there and had the smoothest ride ever to Siem Reap which only took 2 and a half hours, and while chatting to this couple we found out they're christians, and she was a muslim but became a christian 6 years ago and now they're doing this amazing outreach work in bangkok...and it just gave us gooseflesh really as it felt just too much of a coincidence that we'd met them and they'd helped us so much!

Cambodia is lovely, and Siem Reap is beautiful and atmospheric, and has this cool old colonial look. We're staying at a place that has free breakfast (a roll, a banana and tea/coffee - my 1st cup of tea since we left!) and free use of bicycles (cruisers to be more accurate!) and we spent our first day seeing temples today, cycling about 40 km (!!!!) so we're pretty sore and not quite sure what our bums will have to say about doing this again tomorrow. The temples are amazing!! Really exceeded our expectations! We had our first beer for the trip yesterday and it only cost $0.50, and was quite a treat as you can see from the pic :)

Thanks so much for all your comments everyone! We really appreciate it and love hearing from you!!