Siem Reap Temple Tour & "Wandollah"

Route with pics
Picasa Album

After a good night sleep and breakfast we set of for our first day of temple hopping. We biked to the ticketboot where we got our three day ticket (40$/person). They take a picture of you and a minute later you have your three-day pass with photo in your hands. A well organized machine we would say.
To get to the first temple, which was rather remote, we had to do a bit of 'offroading'. The temple was on a mountain where, according to the lonely planet, you could see Ankor Wat from the top. So after a drink, being touched on the face and arms again by an old lady and a good climb we arrived totaly sweaty on the top. A lonely army guy explained us some things in Khmer about the ruins of the temple (so we couldn't understand a word ;) ) and then we wanted to see Ankor Wat from the mountain. Nothing to see (lonely planet should mention you need a good pair of binoculars). Nevertheless the view was beautiful.

Biking to the other temples we heard a lot of "wandollah" from the children. Only after a while we recognized "one dollar" in this strange word. Quite frank to ask for a dollar like that, but we think that a lot of these children don't even understand what they're saying.

At every temple you can see children selling things. They really don't stop asking/begging. It's kinda enoying. You say no, and they just keep on going. When you get out of the temple again and you buy a cold drink they come to you and say (first with a sad then with a angry voice): "first you say no, now you buy cold drink". We said: "yes, well, you didn't want to sell us a cold drink but a scarve". Then they say: "we also sell cold drinks, I told you". Which of course they didn't, but other children then say the same thing. So the girl put on an angry face and I said "don't be angry, I want to see a smile". Her reply was "no smile, you buy, no  smile". This funny way of trying to sell you something quickly got enoying when they didn't stop. So we just took off.
At another temple we wanted to eat something. There were 10 foodstalls next to each other. Imagine this: When they see a foreigner coming out of the temple they run out of their foodstall and all yell and wave at you to come and eat at there place. Really really funny :)
In total we saw 5 temples today and bike 65km to do this.
Tomorrow we'll visit Angkor Wat, which is closer.

Ow yeah, yesterday we got to the 'Chrisostomos' of our trip ('only' 100 days left, which in our case isn't even halfway yet ;) ).