Day 2 of our temple touring... We set out on our electric bikes, which look just like a regular bike, but also have a large battery to power the tires :)  They even have pedals in case you run out of battery, but we were hoping not to have to use them.  The hotel owner told us we'd be able to go for a while and then would need to swap out the battery (for free!) at one of the switching stations near any of the major temples.  We figure there must be some kind of network of electric bike owners, because no one would normally want to own and hand out charged up batteries for free :)

After 2 very active and early days of temple touring, we decided to take it easy today.  We arranged for a taxi to go to Bang Mealea, a temple which is 80 km north east of Siem Reap.  As it's quite a distance away (compared to the others), the taxi's are a bit crazy in pricing.  After a bit of negotiating with our taxi driver, we ended up paying $50, including the $5 toll.   At least our driver spoke very good English :).  Very interesting is that gas here is very expensive compared to Cambodia's neighbors - it's about $3.75 a gallon here. 

We made the long journey to Phnom Penh this morning.  At first we were thinking about taking the ferry that you can ride all the way down the Tonle Sap river from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh.  However, after talking to the owners at The Villa hotel, we were advised against it.  It turns out that the ferry continues to run even though the river and lake are dangerously low due to the dry season.  The ferry often runs aground and gets stuck in the mud, after which the passengers have to wait, potentially for hours, in the sun for a smaller boat to pick them up and continue the journey!  Good thing we found this out or that might have been our fate :)