Goodbye Siem Reap! Hello Sihanoukville!

Today is our last day in Siem Reap. We will be flying down to the coast to a beach town called Sihanoukville.  Cambodia Angkor Air only recently started flying there from Siem Reap within the last few years so people predict it is about to become a go to destination.  The flight is only about an hour but CAA still has some customer service issues to work on. With lots of stories about cancelled flights and ticket changes without informing passengers we asked our hotel to try calling them to confirm our tickets and it took a few calls but finally someone answered and confirmed our tickets. 

Yesterday was our last day at the temples. We went to the Roluos group (Lolei, Preah Ko, Bakong) which were interesting because they are some of the earliest Angkor temples (late 9th century).

For the last temple we stopped at a temple with a pagoda on the grounds about 2km from town called Wat Athvea that was totally deserted. Given how many people are usually around it was very peaceful.  One unique thing we saw there was a string that ran from the pagoda around the some mausoleums (is that the correct word?) then through the temple and ended being tied to a Buddha statue in the center of the temple. Maybe it was some kind of spiritual transmission line?  You can see the string in the picture below. 

Anyway we've kind of run out of stuff to do in the evenings here so I'm ready to move on. There are some other outlying temples I would have liked to see so maybe I would come back in a few years. There is definitely lots of development so I predict lots of change by then!

I leave you with a picture of my Angkor pass.