While there, we did some more research about getting into Laos and it looked like border visas might be a problem, so for safety's sake we picked up my visa in Phnom Penh. Japanese don't need a visa for visits of 15 days or less, so we wanted to pick up a signed, sealed document saying such from the embassy, but it was a no go. We're going to print up some official webpages in English and hopefully Laos if we can find it plus embassy phone numbers, because I am almost sure that we'll walk up to the border and some enterprising gaurd will tell us that just today the rules changed but he'll graciously help us out for $50 or so. I forsee a polite but firm conversation in our future.
So with Phnom Penh behind us we took a bus to Siem Reap, the town closest to Angkor Wat. As we are both pretty tired and spend a lot of days walking from 6 to 8 hours, we decided to take a day or two and rest. The bus company ended up being a company that I don't particularly like and my fears were confirmed when the bus rolled into the bus station, a fenced off place down a dirt road. We had looked up a couple of places to stay before arrving, so we knew roughly where we wanted to stay. Stupidly, we didn't check the distance between places on the map, so the bus center incoveniently located outside of the city was how far from the city we knew not. When we got off, got our bags, and asked a guy how far it was to walk, he said five miles. Of course it was a lie becuase we hadn't given him any money yet, but for all we knew it was actually five miles. When we asked why the bus center was so far, he said that buses can't go in the city (of course, we have seen buses daily since being here). So, we bit the bullet, paid two dollars for a tuk tuk and went into town.
Naturally, our guide told us that every place we wanted to stay was very far, but he knew a place that had good rooms and would take us around until we found a place. The first place he showed us was good enough, down the street from a superkarket (we wanted to stock up and head to the places outside of town but closer to Angkor Wat), and cost what we planned on per night, so we decided what the hell and stayed for a night. The room was clean, the staff were friendly and it hat hot water, so we were pretty happy. The only probelm was the club two doors down that kept me up until 2:30 (how old am I?) At least they played decent music and I was really surprised when I heard my favorite track from Chinaman.
The next day we cheked out and decided to go to another place. The hotel gave us a free tuk tuk until we found our next hotel, which was really great of them. The ride to our "far" place was four minutes or so and nestled in amongst a bunch of other guest houses. We checked them out and found a superb one for $4 a night taht has nice staff, an incredible lounge, and an orange tabby that likes laps. So far, we're really happy. Siem Reap is a lot smaller than the map makes it out to be, so the other side of town is a twenty minute walk or so. It's much better than Phnom Penh.
Sorry for lack of pictures, but the computers here sadly don't recognize Shizuka's camera. I'll do my best to take pictures with mine, becuase tomorrow we head to Angkor Wat! We're going to rent some bicycles and get three day pass, hopefulyl catching lots of sunsets and sunrises while we're there. It's extremely close, ancient, and waiting for us. We might even take a day afterwards in Siem Reap to relax.
Also, I took today to update the Sounds tab with two things from Vietnam, uploaded more pictures into Favorite Pictures, and finally put up the Where We Are map. I'll try to be better with that in the future. Also, if you want pictures, don't forget that you can see all of them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/27338403@N07/ and if you click on the blue "Collections" button next to our profile picture, you can see all the photos sorted into catergories by location. Thank you everyone for the comments, even if we don't really write back. Keep 'em coming!