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On our way 1 1/4 hour trip to Beng Mealea, we passed through many rural villages. Compared to many of the other countries, especially tropical ones, the villages looked in incredible shape. Almost all of the houses are built on stilts, due to the monsoon season which is coming shortly. People were celebrating New Years, and we even saw a small party with a bunch of teenagers dancing (which is insane in this heat, but whatever :)).
When we arrived, we were hoping for a quiet temple adventure (as we had heard that there was only 1 person there when another group visited the day before). Unfortunately, it was moderately crowded with many locals (given it's still New Years). Oh well - we just tried to avoid the groups of people. We walked up and inside the temple, and within the outer walls of the inner sanctuary. We ended up along a path, and just decided to walk along it (it was well walked - so no worries of land mines). After 5 minutes, we came upon a small stream, where the local kids were cooling off, and in the short distance could see a small village. We decided to turn around from here, and as we did, we ran into many locals returning from their visit to the temple, shocked to see 2 white people along their trail :) (but were very friendly with smiles of course!). We headed back to the temple - we had lost a few kids, and now only had 2 of the original boys following us. We climbed around the jungle temple, enjoying some of the carvings, the temple structures, and deep tree rooted walls. It was like a scene from Indiana Jones (and of course Two Brothers :)). We wondered what it would have been like if we really did come across a tiger in here!
We retreated back to the hotel to rest, and caught up on the hundreds of pictures we had taken over the last few days - it has been busy :). After finishing our journaling, we headed out for a mexican restaurant which we had seen across from our earlier dinner. When we asked our TukTuk driver to take us there, he said it was closed - that he had just taken someone there, and were shocked that the owner had left town for New Years (yeah right!). I said, ok we'll go to Le Cafe which was across the street.
After dinner - a quick dip into the pool wrapped up our night. We were headed out on the early morning bus to Phnom Penh!
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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 Beng 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. 
Beng Mealea has the same floor plan as the popular Angkor Wat, but a little smaller. It's has been overrun by the jungle and is in very bad shape, with many of the corridors collapsed. The temple did just get a bit easier to travers with a wooden platform installed by the Two Brothers film crew. While stones have fallen everywhere, the temple itself is very beautiful - a very jungle feel (some relate it to an Indiana Jones type experience). We entered the temple and initially took the "safe" wooden platform walk through. After those 5 minutes, it was time to explore. We were a bit cautious at first, but after a few minutes, we were climbing stones everywhere. We also had picked up a small crew of about 6 kids which decided to follow us around - it was quite amusing. 
After 2 hours of exploring in the extreme heat - we called it a day of temple exploring. We headed back into town, and grabbed lunch at a local backpacker hangout (Le Cafe). I had another round of Chicken Amok - as I wanted to see if it was the restaurant or the dish that was good. Happily, I discovered it was def. the dish :). Jaimie also had a Cambodian red curry and chicken which was good.
When we arrived, we were "shocked" to find it open with people inside (he was just betting we would let him take us to the restaurant of his choice!). Anyways - our mexican was good - we had been missing a Margarita for awhile. We had read that ice here is made at ice factories with purified water, and brought in - a French tradition (???) which they obtained during the French colonial period from 1900's-1950's. Whatever, we just wanted a margarita :).