I have to say Siem Reap was outstanding, and the 3 days we stayed in the area didn’t do it justice. We’ll certainly explore the rest of Cambodia, and would recommend at least doing Siem Reap/Angkor Wat if you’re visiting Thailand.Our flight was the early morning Bangkok Airways, can’t believe they even manage to serve you a quick snack with drinks on such a short flight; we experienced great service at all times. As soon as we landed I knew I would love it there, the vast jungle with palm trees (you know the type, tall with a bulky top!), huge rivers interrupting the jungle once in a while… just so peaceful and yet this is a country that’s been suffering for years with wars and torture…
The airport is very nice, looking more like a hotel – surrounded with decorative pools and huge carvings. I thoroughly recommend that you get the e-visa online; it’s easy and hassle-free. We had to endure a 2 hour long wait for the visa on arrival. Not a great start! Each and every visa application had to be looked at and approved by 7 different uniformed officers…!
We booked to stay at the Auberge Mont Royal d’Angkor hotel. The price, US$33/room inc. tax, also included a complimentary airport pick-up. The driver was already waiting for us at the airport. The road from the airport is lined with huge hotels that are either being built or have already been built – the All Inclusive security-gated types, presumably for less adventurous tourists…
We had planned to chill on our 1st day in Cambodia, but despite the less-than-smooth roads in Siem Reap proper, once at the hotel we realised – how can you sit around with the mighty Angkor so near!?! As soon as we unpacked off we went to explore the town a little and get a bite to eat. The first thing to hit you is the fumes and smog – it is bad, my husband says worse than when he was in Kenya/Nairobi. The traffic is non-stop, and the poverty is noticeable. Despite this, we never felt unsafe or unsure, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the town, whose size is slowly increasing – the new developments can be seen all around the outskirts, which is a shame I think. The town itself has a very nice colonial feel, there are plenty of trendy restaurants and bars in the town, which despite the conditions outside wouldn’t shame European cities. During the day the town feels more or less deserted, you can only see the locals or the odd backpacker or traveller; in the evening it gets a lot livelier but still the town isn’t touristy. Cambodia is very poor country, you can see the people beaten up by the regime and life in general yet they always manage to smile and seemingly see the positive side of life. It would seem we have so much to learn from them – my husband and I agreed it’s a great place to get things in perspective – each night we passed a father sleeping on the street with his 2 children, who were surely barely old enough to walk. Cambodia and her people really touched our hearts – despite the poor conditions, we never felt worried – and this included walking km at 5am and midnight, shopping in the local market, and entrusting our limbs with a tuk-tuk driver! We wished we would have stayed longer, but we both agreed that this is not our last visit.
We wanted to waste no more time in getting to Angkor, although Siem Reap wasn’t short of sights itself – we were passed by a man on a moped with 2 live pigs strapped to the back, squealing! This was shortly after a man drove by on a moped, with a female passenger attached to an IV drip she was holding up! – Cambodian answer to an ambulance?! Our hotel was offering $50/day for an a/c car and guide for the temples, but having walked into Siem Reap we stopped at one of the (hundreds?) of unoccupied tuk-tuk drivers. We asked him to give us his best price to take us down to Angkor Wat and to Phnom Bakheng for a sunset; his first quote was for $4 for some 7 hours! Cue a few minutes of us trying to decide if he said $40, $14, or $4! After we asked him the 10th time, his polite smile started to fade – the answer was $4… He obviously expected us to bargain him down (as in normal for everything in Cambodia) but we were so gobsmacked by the price we just agreed, how could we possibly ask him to lower the price?!! We felt bad as it was, he was always on time (ahead of time) – we used him for the rest of the trip. He ran (literally) for pineapple when we needed refreshing – ps, Cambodian pineapple is juicy! We tried to eat it whilst leaning out of the tuk-tuk… He had cold bottled water for us and gave us suggestions/advice as to what places we should go to etc. Although his English was extremely limited, with the help of sign language and a map we always somehow understood each other. We paid him $10/day for the following 2 days, and $15 for the last ½ day – the only time my husband says he has felt generous and cheap at the same time. My husband says the main thing about Angkor that you can’t appreciate until you go there is the sheer magnitude of the area covered by the temples and ruins. We travelled for up to 45mins (albeit by tuk-tuk) across only the main sites, and most of the people who stay in the gated hotels travel around in air-conditioned buses. We visited the following temples:
ANGKOR WAT – as mentioned on our first day we visited the main temple. I got goose bumps when we approached it, it is phenomenal! The sheer land it covers, you can almost feel history enveloping you… can’t describe it really, just wish I could have a little peek at what it was like back in its days of glory… We were very lucky as there were not too many people; we arrived around 3pm so I guess the main tourist buses had left by then. We saw a lot of monks during our exploration and we were very surprised to see that they are much ‘acclimatised’ to the outside world e.g. mobile phones, cigarettes – surely this is not permitted in Buddhism? We stayed here for more than 3 hours to soak up the atmosphere
We then headed to PHNOM BAKHENG for the sunset. Oh my; so many people!! Very nice sunset but I was disappointed to see that you can only just get a glimpse of Angkor Wat and the sunset is the other direction anyway… although it was a bit misty the views were still amazing and again you realise how vast the area is…
Our second day started rather early, at 4.00am to be precise!! Our tuk-tuk driver was already patiently waiting for us to take us to ANGKOR WAT to watch the sunrise. It was just so beautiful; I had to keep pinching myself that I’m not dreaming this whole experience! We got there early and got a great seat on one of the pools – Angkor and sunrise behind it in the reflection. I took a note of one of the review I found on Fodors about the sunrise; after all the colours disappear it gets light and most of the people assume that that’s it, but WAIT! After half an hour the huge, red, actual sun will appear and it is very pretty and worth the wait.
Then we headed back to our hotel for breakfast and then straight back out. In hindsight we should have taken a picnic with us to save us the journey… We started off with BANTEAY KDEI where, at 8am, we were literally on our own with no other tourists. This was a pretty bog-standard temple ruin (by the standards here that is!), although it was long, and there were quite a few locals seemingly living in there. Also a ‘policeman’ who asked my husband for money; he just said no and walked off with no further trouble – preferring to give the money to a mother who let him photograph her gorgeous daughter!
From there we walked all the way to TA PROHM temple (the famous one – as a previous Fodors member wrote, Indiana Jones come to life!). This was something else! The only disappointing thing was that it was swamped with lot of tourists, although we decided to be patient and waited 20 minutes at each part we wanted a photo of – you can still have some parts to yourself, although you really have to time the pictures between the whirlwind of bussed tourists. We decided to come back the following day at a different time.
From here we walked back to Banteay Kdei where we met with our driver. On the way we saw nothing but local dwellings and nobody but local kids walking back from school, who walked with us for a while and asked endless questions – with an impressive knowledge of English. It was brilliantly peaceful and everyone was surprised that we were walking in the middle of ‘nowhere’ – we also received endless offers to jump on the back of mopeds – but we thoroughly enjoyed it, despite walking about 5km! Totally exhausted we decided to spend the afternoon by the pool, and as soon as we hit the sun lounger, we were in the land of nod! Well it was only the 2nd day of the trip, perhaps we should have allowed for jet-lag!
The following day we started early with BAYON – the ‘face’ temple, beautiful and very interesting temple, definitely worth a visit. We continued to ANGKOR THOM COMPLEX and the ELEPHANT TERRACE. Interesting enough, but as the temples started to fill with tourists we wanted to go a bit further out, so our driver took us to PREAH KHAN. This was one of our favourite temples, it is different from the others – apparently it used to have 2 storeys and you can still see the remains of the walls that used to support the structure. It actually reminded us of Roman-type architecture. The corridors of the complex cross, creating a hall in the middle with a ‘fountain’. We noticed a lot of holes in the walls and we were explained that there used to be diamonds in each one, but the Khmer regime stole everything… we were there almost alone apart from few local women selling the most delicious pineapple yum! It’s well worth walking all the way through Preah Khan, as there are some stunning tree/temple ruins at the far side.
After lunch we of course headed back to do more temples – despite initial worries we weren’t ‘templed out’. We went back to TA PROHM at about 4-5pm and this time the light was just right for some amazing photos, also the touristy buses left so it was a very peaceful and spiritual place to be. We also managed to find loads of areas we had somehow missed the first time through! It really is that big. I was recommended to go to PRE RUP for the sunset; the temple is definitely different, but less interesting. You can see the hills in the background to the north/east but you can’t spot the Angkor Wat from there. Our sunset was rubbish there! However, we were impressed when one of the children selling postcards there asked where we were from – I’m originally from the Czech Republic: to which he replied “capital Prague”! … In general not many people tend to know so I was impressed when a little kid in Cambodia knows his geography!
I really wanted to visit the Tonle Sap Lake but after long discussions we decided that we would leave it for another visit. Our main reason for coming to Cambodia was Angkor Wat and to see as much of it as we could. This of course is impossible given the timeframe we had but we did our best, we decided to do smaller number of temples but enjoy them for a longer time – it worked great for us as we didn’t feel rushed. I think it would be quite easy to spend 7 days in Siem Reap and still have plenty of activities to do.
Also wanted to visit the Artisans d’Angkor school but again run out of time so the shop at the airport had to do, they’ve got some lovely stuff! We did however visit the local market in the evening and bought few bits and pieces from wooden carvings to table cloths etc we haggled hard and managed to snatch some real bargains! As for the eateries; we found a very cosy restaurant, ”Touch”, across the road from ‘Red Piano’ restaurant, very chic, contemporary furnishings, lovely food and cocktails!
Now what is up with the driving, can you believe that I didn’t even realise that Cambodians drive on the right?! And that’s after coming from Thailand where they drive on the left! That tells you something about the style of their driving, because most of the time you’re sort of in between both sides or just simply trying to stay on the road or fit in! After Siem Reap Bangkok feels like a very calming place in terms of traffic and, if you’ve been to Bangkok you’ll know that’s saying something!! Our record was 3 on a bicycle and 5 on a moped!
A few words on the hotel; Auberge Mont Royal d’Angkor hotel was adequate, no luxury but for $33 a night in peak season I would not expect it anyway. The bathrooms are rather spartan and tiny but very clean. Location is great; there is also a nice pool area. The price includes breakfast, which again is decent. Overall a good choice considering we were hardly in the hotel and mainly spent our time exploring the outdoors.
I was a bit surprised by the weather, it was quite chilly in the morning and evenings (jumpers for the sunrise and rides home), hot during the day but not unbearably hot – we wore trousers. I’d say the best time to go for the temples; on the other hand I would love to see Cambodia in the green season as the jungle did look dry at the time we were there.
Cambodia had a lot to offer us, from the outstanding scenery and sights, to the simple fact no sellers hassled us when walking around the local market. It sounds a cliché, but we truly were generally greeted with smiles throughout Cambodia, and we met some lovely people. I am sure that this was not our last visit.
To sum up we had a fantastic time in Cambodia. It always seems like a cliché, but the people we met were just amazing and so friendly; we have a lot to learn from them. Whether it was the school kids laughing and chasing us as we rode by, or the old shopkeeper who then offered us a bed in his house because we looked too tired to make it to our village before sunset, it was a rare experience to feel genuine warmth from strangers.
Although some places didn’t live up to our expectations, there were some places that totally surprised us; it is all an experience and I think that’s what travelling is about.
ps we loved the food!
Eyes On The Cloud 