First day in Siem Reap, we thought against heading straight to Angkor Wat; we've got plenty of time to see the complex. First thing was a nice early morning swim in the pool. Nice and quiet at 7am and it wasn't heated, so we were awake pretty quickly. After a few laps we got changed and went down for our breakfast. 

They gave a few different options, but we both went with the European breakfast with a Spanish omelette. Omelette was good, bacon was passable, smooth sausage and other unidentifiable meat not so much. 

We went out to explore Siem Reap a little, as well as tick a few admin bits off like getting cash and a local sim card. It really does seem totally different to Hanoi, just so much more relaxed, and people are actually aware of what's going on around them. We had a little wander up the river; they have these cool foot bridges over it which light up at night. We got a SIM card no problem (80gb for £7, not too shabby) and then (obviously) went for some lunch in a nearby cafe, the Hideout. The good thing with Siem Reap (and from what i can read Phnom Penh as well) is that there is no shortage of really good places to eat. We ordered a Khmer curry and I got a Fried Rice, with a Passionfruit Soda for Hannah and Strawberry Soda for me (we've become quite partial to those). The love of the Asian food is coming back, from Hanoi where we (well moreso me) really lost patience with it all, but here, whilst not as cheap, still pretty cheap and really good. One thing that is quite weird is the local currency (riel) is used as change and the major currency is USD. From here we walked on towards the city centre and through the very touristy parts. They definitely didn't have the same gaudiness as other places, but still clearly for westerners. On our way back across a different bridge, we did notice they had lion statues, and the detail captured was just incredible, they were the dog's bollocks so to speak.



We walked back to the hotel, then headed to the local gym. It was about 15 minute walk away, but in the middle of the day, it was very hot and we were sweating buckets. The good thing is that the gym was only $1 to get in, the bad news is you do get what you pay for. Extra costs for the shower, water, to use the treadmill or apparently wear a top. But you can get a good workout, so that's kind of what you need. Needless to say, by the time we got back to the hotel, we were very tired. Not sure a Friday night pub crawl was on the cards.

For the evening, we spotted a cool little market on our travels in the afternoon, so we headed back there to have a look around and find some food. The market was not your usual tat, it looks like they only let in pretty good stalls, which was great and we ended up buying quite a few things. After the third purchase, we thought that potentially food was in order as shopping on an empty stomach is a risky game. There were quite a few highly rated places in the little area, first place we went too was full of families with loud irritating children, so we promptly left and made our way to Atmosphere, a Middle Eastern place. We got in and realised that we had made the right decision, it smelled amazing. I ordered a chicken kebab and lime & mint soda and Hannah had falafel and a passionfruit soda (we quickly swapped the drinks, turn out we preferred the others). Food was excellent, good evening all round.