It's been one hell of an action packed day today! We're exhausted and it's only 4pm.
We had a pre-departure meeting last night to meet everyone in the group and pay all the extra bits and pieces we have to hand over. Everyone also buys a Student ID card which you then have to make yourself with a passport photo and some plastic overlays, they actually don't look too bad at an initial glance and they get us into all the places for student prices.
We had a few drinks with everyone then headed up to bed and pack our bags for our first day.

There's 16 people in our group, a few other couples, a few fellow Aussies and Kiwis and people from all over the place. We also have a guide, Claire and a driver whos name I forget but I'm sure will be burnt into my brain...

Hello from Cairo, we've finally made it after what seems like 48 hours travelling, though it can't have been that long.

We had a good last day in Bangkok, we managed to get up in time to get breakfast from our hostel, then caught a Taxi to see the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho. It's a massive Buddha status that is lying down, it's so massive and long that it's impossible to get a photo to show its true size. Sarah got some really good photos though.
We realised on the way back we're pretty good at getting around in Thailand now, we asked one of the cabs outside the Wat to take us back to our guest house. He tried to quote us a fixed price of 250 Baht, a joke seeing as we'd got there in a Taxi (with his meter running) for only 100. The trick is...

Flew back into Bangkok this morning, we're becoming experts at it now, seeing as this was our fourth time. I'm feeling quite sick which is a real bugger, I had a bad dose of the Cambodian Cacks though it seems to have mostly cleared up (hardened up?) now.

We've been in transit really the last few days, we left our nice plush hotel in Siem Reap (The Golden Banana) with a little bit of a kerfuffle, we'd booked the bus tickets through to hotel and they'd failed to mention that a free shuttle bus would pick us up to take us to the main bus station. So I'd organised our TukTuk driver (the really good one who took us around Angkor Wat) to come and get us. We come out of our room and there were two people waiting for us! I just paid our Tukie driver the amount...

We're still here in Siem Reap and I am still amazed at the place every time we venture out of our little bunglow hotel.
Late yesterday afternoon the tuk-tuk driver we hired came to pick us up from our hotel and took us to see the sunset (one of the many must dos) at the temple of Bakheng Hill. The tuktuk stopped at the site and we joined the hundreds of other tourists (mostly Japanese, more on that in a minute) for the 10 minute climb up the hill. Once we got to the top we saw the first of what was to be many magestic temples, obviously crumbling slowly but still totally amazing.

What I wasn't quite prepared for was the amount of people there though, it's obvious that Cambodia has become not only a place for backpackers to visit, but also package tourists. Mostly Japanese package tourists who...

We're in Siem Reap at the moment, the home of Angkor Wat. Yesterday was a very busy day, but probably one of the best ones we've had so far. I'll wind back to yesterday morning, when we were still in Phnom Pehn.

Un picked us up again bright and early and took us to the local "Russian Market", we looked around for a little while but it was extremely hot. So hot that it was like walking around in a sauna, so we piked on that after 15 minutes, not before my purchase of a Angkor Beer T-Shirt. I've bought 3 T-Shirts so far, a Chang Beer T-Shirt, a Koh Tao T-Shirt and now a Cambodian Beer one.
Once we left that market we headed to another market (not sure of the name) and had a look at all the great "Rolex" watches on display. I might even buy one...

We've made it to Cambodia and have had a great, but tiring, day.

We landed in Bangkok yesterday afternoon about 3:15pm, we were quite amused when they announced over the plane's PA system that we'd touched down 20 minutes early. Not quite sure how they managed to get there plane there that early, I guess they were thinking we'd have to spend a bit of time queuing in the air to land.

I should mention the Taxi driver in Chiang Mai. Once Sarah had gone in for her 3 hour massage/facial/spa treatment I found a taxi just outside the spa place and asked the taxi driver if he could pick us up at 12:00pm. He was quite an old taxi driver, I'd say probably about 70 or so. I had to show him on his wristwatch where the big and little hands would be at the time we wanted to...

We are living the good life at the moment!
Last night we decided we'd go out and instead of eating at the usual cheaper places we eat at, we'd got to a fancy resturant and have a flash meal.
Sarah looked in some of the many free brochures and found a place that looked nice, so we got dressed up (well, I tried) and headed out in the pouring rain.

The place was really flash looking, we even had a quick stress before going in that it looked a little too nice for us. But it was perfect. There was even two guys playing nice mellow guitar as we ate our meal. The food itself wasn't anything more (or less) amazing than we've already had, but the nice surroundings, music and a few drinks made it very enjoyable.

Sarah's currently enjoying a nice spa massage treatment thing, so I'm off...

Cooking school last night was one of the best things we've done so far. Right up there with the Elephant Park. (Be sure to check out other photos updates, including a few taken on the night boat)

We were picked up from our guest house and driven to the cooking school, where we met the other people who were also doing the cooking course with us. We were given recipe books which showed the tasty things we'd be cooking and also how to cook them, so we could remember after we left.

Firstly we were shown all the various herbs we'd be using to cook with, what their flavours are, plus what you can use as a substitute if you don't have some of them. Once the run down was over it was time to get stuck into our first cooking course, Tom Yum soup. The lady teaching...