Day 25: Siem Reap - Cambodia
We arrive in Bangkok at 6.30 am and hurry to the place where we're supposed to be picked up to find no one there. We wait and someone finally comes to pick us up at 7.30 am to take us to the bus. This bus takes us to the Thai-Cambodian border. We get off at the border to have lunch and have our visas arranged. We cross the border without too much trouble, but at the other side we have to wait for an hour for the bus that's supposed to take us to Siem Reap. It's not a favourable first impression of Cambodia - the border town Poipet is, frankly, a dusty shithole with lots of huge garish casinos and it's a lot hotter than it was in Northern Thailand where we were the night before. When the bus finally arrives it turns out to be a very rickety one. My window doesn't open, though that turns out to be rather fortunate as the road to Siem Reap is all dirt road and hence very dusty. We'd heard lots of horror stories about this road from other travellers, but I must admit it wasn't that bad. According to our very talkative guide the road is a lot better than it was and it "only" takes us 4,5 hours to drive the 150 km to Siem Reap.
There's only a few towns and lots of rice fields along the way, and when it gets dark it turns out there are a lot of purple fluorescent lights that attract crickets; which then get caught in nets beneath the lights and eaten by the locals.
We arrive in Siem Reap at 8.30 pm and it turns out to be quite a surprise. It's a much bigger town than I had expected and there are a lot of expensive resort type of fancy hotels. We stop at a guesthouse and even though our guide says we can be taken to another guesthouse we decide to stay there as it looks quite nice and I'm too tired after having sat on buses for 24 hours to be bothered about picking another guesthouse. :D
Day 26, 27 and 28: Siem Reap - Cambodia
We arrange with one of the guys at the guesthouse he'll drive us around in his tuk tuk for three days for $60, and we set off for Angkor Wat. I'm pretty excited as this is the sole reason we came all the way to Cambodia in the first place (it's a bit out of the way). Angkor Wat is a World Heritage Site and consists of a very large area with lots of temples. Angkor Wat is actually the biggest and most wellknown temple in the area, but usually people use the name to refer to the entire area as well.
On the first day we visit Angkor Thom, Ta Keo, Ta Phrom and Banteay Kdei. We have lunch and then go see Angkor Wat itself. It's all completely stunning and *so* worth going out of our way and enduring the gruelling busride!
The second day we get up at 5 am to check out Angkor Wat at sunrise. It's a stunning sight and afterwards we check out a few other temples. It's nice to see them in the morning light - usually a much nicer light than in the afternoon. It's also not as hot yet, so that's nice. Today we see Banteay Sreu, Ta Som and Neak Pean. It's interesting how all these temples are different - they're built in different periods of time, with different purposes and by different people. There are so many temples in the area and none of them is the same as any of the others.
On the third day we visit the temples in the Roluos group - a bit further out from the main site. The drive there is quite nice, we pass a lot of tiny villages and it's a nice way of seeing how the locals live their lives.
After having seen these temples we've seen all the main ones and our driver suggests we go check out Tonle Sap lake as well, which we do. We go on a boatride on the lake. The boatride is a bit lame as we're only on the boat for about an hour in total. Basically we get dropped off at a restaurant/souvenir shop on the lake and then get taken back. Still, on the way there we pass a lot of houses on the water and it's really interesting to see how these people live here.
So Angkor Wat is definitely worth the extra travelling it took to get there and I would really like to see more of Cambodia as it seems to be a fascinating country. We only saw the really touristy part, and only for three days. I do think I would like to wait a few years though before I return to Cambodia, and come back when the country is perhaps doing a bit better, economically? Right now, Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in an already poor region (though I suspect especially the booming tourist industry will bring lots of money to Cambodia in the future) and at Angkor Wat there were a lot of children running around trying to sell you stuff. It made me quite uneasy - these children should have the chance to be in school instead of selling cheap crap to rich tourists! These children are pretty annoying too, they stick around for ages trying to make you buy their stuff, saying things like 'if you don't buy something you'll make me cry!', which I thought was very cheeky. I also felt pretty guilty about not buying anything and being annoyed by these children, and I really hated that. I did buy a few trinkets here and there, and then all of a sudden they completely lose interest in you and go bother someone else, which also annoyed me as you're seen as nothing more than a walking cash machine. I suppose that's fair enough, but still. And it's not just the children that want your money, it's everyone. People try to make you buy stuff all over South East Asia and I'm pretty used to that sort of thing having encountered it in other places, but in Cambodia it just seemed worse than anywhere I've been. For example, the guy who was our guide on the boat trip just went on and on about how little he earned - amidst all the other interesting things he told us about life on the lake - and how he and the driver lived off tips. I don't know, it just made me feel uneasy. Maybe that's just my Western mind, not used to having people ask for money so blatantly. Mostly it makes me feel guilty though. I don't consider myself rich at all, but compared to these people I'm very well off and they kind of like to rub it in your face.
Anyway. On our third day in Siem Reap we also went to an incredibly cheesy dance and dinner thing. They had a big buffet with really good food and some Cambodians dancing up on stage for the tourists. I really enjoyed the dancing they did (traditional Apsara dancing), but it was a pretty touristy set up. After the dancing was over all the Japanese people jumped up on stage straight away to have their pictures taken with the dancers, which was a very funny sight. :D
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Siem Reap Hotels
