That probably could be the ideal marketing slogan for this city 
. The centre is just a couple of kilometres away from THE attraction of South-East Asia, so it’s neither very surprising nor not understandable that the whole city is catering to, surviving from and dealing with tourism. We arrived in this otherwise pretty nice town in the evening on the 30th of february and should have the honour to celebrate the upcoming year 2010 with masses of tourists before we would take a look at the famous ancient temples of Angkor, too. Actually, all that was not really bad, in the city were a lot of people that were pretty relaxed and easy-going, there was a Couchsurfing New Years party called out and in general no shortage of happy pizza restaurants and bars that serve beer for 0,50$ per mug. So, what’s there that ones liver could want more for a New Years celebration? The Couchsurfing party where we decided to go to took place in a terrace restaurant that overlooks the Pub Street from where we had a 
gorgeous view over the masses and the big street party that was going on under us. The prize we paid for that that privilege location was that our own party suffered a little bit from it because everybody was just standing on the terrace and watching the party beneath. But it didn’t really matter, the beer was flowing and we had some nice chats before we counted down to midnight and then started to stroll around town to join the party a bit instead of just watching it, too. It was nice with live bands in the streets, foreigners and locals dancing the night away together and a never ending stream of draught beer but it was nothing really special, I guess that’s the problem that all public New Years parties have somehow. Anyway, it was one of the best New Years Eves we ever had but we can just give credits for that to ourselves, because simply we two really made the best out of that night and had a lot of fun
As every year, the first of january is just there to chill out and to get rid of these huge hangovers the new year brings with it as a first gift but at the 2nd we slowly made our way to the ruins. We usually wanted to explore this side for three days but the Myanmar visa problems left us no 
other choice to rush through in just one and a half days. The ticket, by the way with 20$ for one day, 40$ for three days or 60$ for a week not really cheap, is valid from pm the day before the real starting day so we already went there in this evening to see the sunset together with another thousand tourists at the main big temple Angkor Wat which gives the name to the whole area. Always again it’s the same disgusting thing with this silly tourists: the sun sets and the people start to run away back to the guesthouse and abandon the sites for the smarter persons who stay a little bit longer within seconds. So we stayed a little bit longer and had this main temple almost for ourselves what gave us a totally different picture. We had to cycle back in the dark now, but that was worth it, definitely. The next day we started out for some further explorations with our rented yellow 1$ bikes and found temple ruins in very different conditions, some look like almost new, some really are just ruins but all combine the fascinating idea that this are the remainings of an old former capital city that had it’s best times 700-1000 years ago with a population of one million when London just had 70000 inhabitants and Berlin 
was not even founded. I think beside the Inka ruins of Macchu Picchu in Peru, the mayan ruins of Merida in Mexico and the Pyramids of Gizeh in Egypt this is really one of the big places in the world to dream yourself back into past centuries and lost civilisations. We, with just one whole day at the ruins maybe were a little bit tooo motivated and in the afternoon we slightly felt overdosed and exhausted by this great ancient site. I guess if you go to Angkor you should bring a little bit more time, do it slowly and take your time to wander around and explore, after this hurried one and a half days we were actually happy that there weren’t two more to come. We already had to leave Cambodia to organise my Myanmar visa.