Cambodia
Siem Reap
From January 25th to January 28th
Day 1
We flew from Bangkok and landed in Siem Reap. We were picked up by the hotel in a 1965 extended cab Mercedes. We sat in the backseat and enjoyed the 20 minute ride from the airport to our hotel, Amansara, in downtown Siem Reap. This was our first time staying at an Aman property, and it did not disappoint.
We had only a short while to put our stuff away at the hotel room before our first tour started at one of the top visited temples in the area, Ta Nei. We hopped in a tuk tuk provided by the hotel with our guide, We, and our tuk tuk driver. Ta Nei was like a scene from a movie. The trees had a shine to them, and the rocks that were still in place looked like they had been there for thousands of years.
The next stop was at one of the gates to the city just before seeing the next main attraction. The city “gates” were made of the same large rocks that the temples were made out of. There were faces carved in to the rocks that represented buddhist gods and other beliefs. Connected to the gate was a bridge of sorts that was also adorned with sculptures of more figures commonly found in the buddhist religion. We saw young Cambodian couples enjoying themselves on gold colored traditional Cambodian boats in the river, having their portraits taken… perhaps for a wedding or recent engagement.
Our guide explained to us that Angkor Tom is one of the largest religious structures in the world. There weren’t too many tourists walking around here, so we got some great pictures and got to walk around to all the parts we wanted to see.
Day 2
We woke up the next morning at 4:30am to make it to our 5am visit to the best preserved temple in all of Cambodia, Angkor Wat. The goal is to make it to the temple early to watch sunrise come over the temple spires, avoid the afternoon heat, and the afternoon tourist crowds. While walking our way, in pitch black darkness, to Angkor Wat, we heard a bunch of monks chanting from a nearby monastery. Our guide saw that we had never heard or seen anything like it before, so he took us up close to the monastery where we could watch the monks perform their morning chants together as a group. All dressed in burnt orange, the youngest monk looked like he was no more than 3 years old. The eldest leading the chant couldn’t have been over 40, and there were about 20 of them total. It was really a great way to start our tour of the temple, by taking a moment to pause and appreciate the vibrating sound of the monks chants and echo throughout the space.
We spent about 2 hours total at Angkor Wat, waiting for sunrise, waiting for the local “protectors” to open the temple to the tourists, walking through the temple itself, and taking pictures of “our couple” (as the guide would say). As we were walking out of the temple area we could see that there was a pack of monkey climbing all over the outdoor perimeter of the temple. Had we not already seen monkeys in Bali, we would have been shocked to see them freely climbing all over the place.
We headed off in our tub tuk for the next temple, it was only around 7:30am. We we pulled up to the entrance of the temple, we noticed a few military trucks with military personnel both standing in the trucks, as well as standing at the entrance of the temple. We weren’t sure what they were waiting around for, but we got the sense that we wanted to move on quickly past them. The military “soldiers” looked young and slightly mischievous. After we got in the temple, I asked our guide if it was normal to have them there. He told me that it wasn’t normal, but that the military group was there to remove people from their homes and take them to their “new homes” outside of the city. This relocation has been happening in Cambodia for quite some time (since the 70s), and there’s a lot of controversy about the way the relocation is supposed to benefit all parties involved. Our guide had choice words.
We walked our way into the woods a bit and found our way to the “Tomb Raider” temple, also known as Ta Prohm. It was incredible to see the old trees growing all over the temple. It almost looked unreal, but there must have been 20 trees growing both inside the temples and on top of them. The roots of the trees were sprawling everywhere and it was very picturesque. There weren’t many people at this temple because it was still so early. We practically had the place to ourselves.
We were leaving Ta Prohm and saw a pack of kids on their bikes. They wanted to speak in English so we spoke to them for a bit and they even started to race our tuk tuk as we took off for the hotel. One kid hung on our tuk tuk for a while before he said “okay bye” and peeled off.
By the time we got to the hotel it was around 10:30am, so we got our breakfast, then went down for a nap. We had already been up for 5 hours!
We woke up from the nap and got ready for our 4pm tour of Tonlé Sap. Tonle Sap is a large lake where there are floating villages. We hopped on our private boat on Tonle Sap and started cruising down the canal/stream. Quickly we saw a few hundred fishing village style homes lining the canal/stream. These homes were propped up by any number of things: styrofoam, large netted bags of empty water bottles, and any other kind of recyclable item you can think of that floats. This group of homes, or village, rather, was a great example of how resourceful people can be; and somebody’s trash is another person’s treasure.
We took off from Chong Khnies and were on the water for about 2.5 hours. We watched sunset on the Tonle Sap, had some snacks on the boat, and headed back to Siem Reap.
We found ourselves on the hunt for a local bar, and we found Miss Wong bar near Sala Kamreuk. We had a few drinks and a few bites (dim sum & spring rolls) and continued our crawl over to Pub Street.
Our tuk tuk driver thought it was funny that we wanted to go to Pub Street, as it was entirely different from the rest of our Cambodia experience. The music was loud, it was crawling with big club-like bars, a lot of flashing lights, street vendors, and people begging for help. Hailey’s eye got caught on the fish tanks that ‘exfoliate’ your feet, so that ended up being the actual first stop on Pub Street. Max got a foot massage while Hailey got her feet eaten. We tried to find a bar to drink in afterwards, but the bars on pub street were mostly empty (because it was so loud). It was like each bar on pub street was competing with the bar across the street to see whose music could be louder.
Day 3
The next day we woke up and had massages at 9am before our 11am city tour. This was our final full day in Cambodia.
We, our guide, took us first to a silk shop on the north side of the city [name] to see how silk scarves are made, and watch the other artisans craft designs on bowls made of silver, wood, copper, rock… you name it. We picked up some gifts for our family back home at this shop and carried on our way.
We went to a wet market, Old Market, afterwards to see how Cambodians trade produce in the city and what kinds of food they like to eat also. There was a good amount of seafood in the market, and the locals weren’t shy about how they gut, clean, strip, marinate, cut, count currency, wash build up with buckets, check their cell phones, make phone calls, rinse, repeat. All day and night long.
Somehow we had an appetite after visiting the market, and we headed to lunch at Chanrey Tree just off Pokambor Street. Hailey ordered a seafood curry and Max ordered a vegetable fried rice.
After lunch we said our goodbyes to We and prepped for our last night in Siem Reap. We walked from the hotel back into the downtown area to see them setting up for a concert. There were hundreds of street vendors and a massive stage set up.
We had a drink at Asana Old Wooden House, which they claim is still in its original structure. It was on stilts, much like how some of the floating houses were near Tonle Sap lake.
Day 4
Our last day in Cambodia we started it off with another massage, packed, and headed to the airport for Vietnam.
Next time we visit, we plan to check out:
The capitol Phnom Penh
Smaller temples outside of Siem Reap