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Siem Reap International Airport, Cambodia. Probably one of the most obscure airports I'll fly into I think. We'd been delayed by an hour due to technical problems already, and after the hefty 40 minute flight we were quite exhausted! We met a couple from America and shared a cab ride into town so we could find some accommodation for the evening. The cab driver had slightly different plans. We had a list of guest houses to check out, but he wouldn't take us to any of them, only places that were obviously paying him commission. We finally found one that was next to one of our preferred choices and promptly bolted from the taxi (we'd already paid!) as fast as we could with 18kg backpacks on.

Siem Reap is famed for basically one thing only; it's ancient temples. One of them is the biggest religious building on planet Earth, another used in the Tomb Raider movie and a whole bunch of others just waiting to be discovered.

We had given ourselves only one day to explore Angkor, so to maximise on what we could see, and minimise on what we spent; we rented bicycles for the day. We covered around 20-25km during the day and saw many temples (or 'Wats' as they're known).

The first was the Bayon Temple (Picture no.1). Extremely impressive three-tiered temple. Lots of intricately detailed bas-reliefs and I think thousands of sculpted Buddhist statues. Parts of this and all the other temples are still off limits to the public since the walls and floors are not strong enough to be safe. Some stone banisters looked very much like you could knock them over with very little effort.

The Bayon temple had around 30-40 visitors whilst we were there, but we were the only ones looking at our next one. (XXX XXX - Picture no.2) was built overlooking the jungles and Angkor Wat itself. Nick and I took turns to scale the steep, narrow steps to the summit and take in the awesome views looking over Angkor. A cool moment here to be away from all other tourists.

After sitting with some locals eating bananas and explaining the intricacies of England - driving on the left, getting 2 days off work per week and the cold and often miserable weather, we peddled on to Ta Phrom - an 800 year old temple.

We found a sneaky, sandy road that shortcut away from the main route. Along the way, we discovered a few huge Khmer arch ways and saw some amazingly coloured butterflies.

I'd been looking forward to getting to Ta Phrom the most of all the temples. You may have seen parts of Ta Phrom (Picture no.4) with Angelina Jolie bounding across them in Tomb Raider. It was really cool to see this temple since it has been left in a similar way that it was last discovered - with the jungle literally growing in and around it. The carvings and elaborate stupas sharing the limelight with towering tree's and creeping foliage. After the gleaming bright temples of Bangkok, and similar throughout the rest of South East Asia, here more so than anywhere gave the feeling that you were touching some real history.

After some lunch, we jumped on our hogs again. The Cambodian rough roads were starting to take their toll on my Western rear-end so the pace started to drop a little.
We pulled in at another small monument overlooking a large (possibly man-made) lake. More surprisingly, bumping into the two women we'd met whilst elephant riding in Thailand!

The afternoons sun was starting to drop so we made our way hastily to the daddy of all the worlds temples - Angkor Wat.

A huge rectangular moat stretching out around 100metres from the initial walls of Angkor Wat was first to be crossed. A long stone causeway presents you with the main gates. Once inside, we had to walk a couple more hundred metres to get to the main centre piece. By this point their were hundreds of tourists navigating their way around the Wat, most funny was the Japanese/Chinese tourists that had climbed the awkward, steep, stupa steps, then queuing in droves to get back down the only banistered stair case (terrified chaos); not to mention the women trying their hardest to keep the modesty in tact making the descent!

After climbing the main Stupas ourselves, we ventured the grounds some more until sunset before heading back into town. Of all the temples I've seen in the past 2 months, these are the ones I would recommend you visit. Truly amazing.