My flights to Cambodia all went smoothly, unlike my temperament, which became increasingly frazzled as the journey wore on and on. In Bangkok there was an agonisingly slow bus transfer across town from the international airport to the budget airline station. The city looked alien under the tropical sun and towering clouds, like a colony on Mars and I became increasingly impatient with the traffic jams, although I actually had hours in hand.
While waiting for my last plane to Siem Reap, the town that services the Angkor temple complex, I managed to log onto a free wifi service to find that Sue had overslept and missed her flight and would not arrive until Sunday. Then at Siem Reap there were delays as the bureaucrats threw in an extra form at the last minute, probably due to an Ebola scare, given that they were all wearing face masks.
Things continued to go downhill as my taxi driver took me to the wrong hotel and I had to get a tuk tuk to finally reach my destination. But today after a decent night's sleep the world looked good again and I had a fantastic day bicycling around the temples and taking boring photographs. I guess I can now call myself an experienced traveller and if I've learnt anything from my travels it's to keep smiling. Smiling is infectious and people may think you're an idiot, but they can't help smiling back. Thus when I cycled seven kilometres from Siem Reap to Angkor Wat, the first of the big temples and discovered that I needed a ticket for $40, which I didn't have on me, I kept smiling and lo and behold a local cop gave me a ride on his motorbike back into town to the nearest ATM and then on to the ticket office for a very reasonable five dollars.
Oh, the other thing I've learned from all my travels is that the quality of a photo is in inverse proportion to the importance of its subject.
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