16-17 january: siem reap, days 2 and 3

clearly we've been remiss at keeping the blog up to date these last few days, which makes it even harder to want to climb out of this hole we've dug for ourselves! so we're going to soldier on and quickly capture the highlights to bring you back to present day...

on the 16th we had our second day of sightseeing in siem reap where, you guessed it, we saw a few more really old temples! since we had already seen angkor wat, these were the one-off temples that each had some unique characteristic. for example, of course we saw the "tomb raider" temple (for those of you who aren't video gamers, angelina jolie starred in a feature length film a few years back and they shot at this temple). the most amazing part about that one was the fact that no matter what language various tours were being given in, you could make out the words "angelina jolie" about every 30 seconds. then we saw one that most closely resembles how the temples looked when they were originally stumbled across by the french about 75 years ago, tangled up in massive tree roots. admittedly, we were templed-out by noon that day. spent a relaxing afternoon at the pool, went to dinner at a cool place called madame butterfly and called it a night pretty early.

the next day was just awesome. no alarm, nowhere in particular to be. spent most of the day lounging by our hotel's gorgeous pool, reading our books (we've finished a few great ones since we've been away). in the late afternoon we trekked out to see the sunset, perched on the walls of one of the ancient temples that offers the best unobstructed view. picturesque, much? then we figured, why walk back down the hill when you can ride an elephant instead?! definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far (ours was named "tia" and she was a black elephant). kim is not even joking when she claims she wishes we could have an elephant as a pet. we're trying to channel this love into perhaps an elephant-esque dog, so let us know if you know of any that fit that bill.

we went straight from there to the center of town where we had a great last night in siem reap - got drinks in a bar/cafe overlooking the street and dinner in a low-key cambodian restaurant with great "khmer style" food (which is basically a cross between vietnamese and thai). we ambled down the street and saw something so weird that we decided we just HAD to partake -- there was basically a street with three or four different places offering the same weird service called "dr. fish," where you sit on the edge of a kiddie pool filled with little goldfish (or at least that's what they look like) that swim around your feet and (not making this up) are there to "massage" your feet, which means eat the dead skin off. if you close your eyes and forget that there are actually gross little fish biting you, it kind of feels like little jacuzzi bubbles swarming all around your feet. but no, its flesh-eating fish. there were three other girls sitting across from us that will help us paint the picture, since they had about one or two fish paying attention to each of their feet. how many did andrew have? probably 100! even the owner of the place came over and started pointing in disbelief at how ferociously these fish attacked andrew's feet. we need to get that boy some more pedicures, apparently.

a fun end to the middle portion of our trip. goodbye cambodia, hello thailand. can't believe we're heading to our final destination country!

next up: fly to bangkok