Cambodia, adventure five

This post is has been a long time coming, but I finally have time to reflect. Here it goes.
Almost spur of the moment, I decided to head to Cambodia (Siam Reap, to be exact) with a different group people than I normall travel with. The idea sounded super exciting because I was going to be able to travel with a new possy, and as I had recently learned, traveling with people really does bring a group together.
We left Wednesday afternoon and headed via minibus from Mochit to Aranya Phratet (a 3 hour journey), the last city in Thailand before you can enter Cambodia. Weary of the fake border scams, we took to the street headed for the real border which from far away looked like a large temple. Stop one was leaving Thailand, stop two was getting the Cambodian visa, stop three was entering Cambodia, stop four was getting into another minivan to take us to Siam Reap (another 4 hours from the border). We had a "guide" of sorts wearing a Cal hat take us through to make sure we made it into Cambodia safely, and then once we did, he tried to get us into a "free bus," which was another scam that we read about ahead of time. Once we got to Siam Reap and finally made it to Dynyka, we put our bags down and went immediately to Pub Street (Siam Reap's version of Khao San Rd) to get dinner. Shortly thereafter we went back to the hostel and passed out, 7 people in one room sharing 3 beds.
Thursday we went to Preah Vihear Temple, a temple that borders Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand to learn a little about the conflict between Cambodia and Thailand and to view of first of 5 major temples that weekend. We left early-ish in the morning, and after 3 hours in a mini-van, arrived at the base of the mountain. We quickly learned that we were going to be split into 3 pick-up trucks from there in order to head to the top of the mountain to view the temple ruins.
The next day we woke up at a whopping 4am to leave Dynyka to head to Angkor. We split again into three tuk tuks and drove with our guide to the most popular temple in Cambodia. Watching the sun rise behind Angkor was incredible, to say the least. At first, it was pitch black. Slowly but surely as the sun rose I could start to make out the outline of the temple, then the lotus flowers on the pond, and then finally the carvings in the temple. Although I was super cranky early in the morning, seeing the magic that the sun was able to do on Angkor was well worth it.
After touring Angkor we headed to 3 more temples that day-my favorite being the tree temple where tomb raider was filmed. The way the trees grew out of the stone was also so magical, the way life can blossom from nothing.
The next day after half the group departed, the remaining half spent the day waking up late (such a blessing), eating, and riding bikes to a beautiful lake. I biked like 15 miles!! WHAT? (Also I ate two bacon cheeseburgers).
The last part of the journey was getting home, and after the many hours from Siam Reap to the capital and spending 3 getting through the border and another 3 in the minivan (we sat in the way back, no leg room), we finally hit Bangkok.
What a long trip.
Things that surprised me: Cambodia is more expensive than Thailand, the Cambodians on the street were less friendly than the Thais were, Cambodians use American dollars as currency and rial (their own currency) as cents.