Siem Reap WOW!

First of all, Siem Reap has a new airport. 

When we booked our flights months ago, the plan was to fly into REP airport which was 5 minutes out of town. Between then and our actual flight, they shut down REP airport and diverted all the flights to SAI which is a new airport about an hour out of town. Strangely, Cambodia Angkor Air alerted us to the change, but Thai Air Asia (who we booked our out bound flight with) did not. So up until we arrived, we thought we were flying into one airport and out of another! We obviously figured this out, and the only inconvenience was that it cost us $60 round trip to and from the new airport. Weird that Thai Air Asia never gave us a heads up. 

The new airport is apparently owned by the Chinese which we found strange. 

We stayed at a great homestay we found through AirBnb that was about $23 a night. 

View of the family compound at our homestay taken from our balcony.

Their overhead fan appeared to be a disassembled floor fan hung from the ceiling. We saw this everywhere.

The host set everything up for us which was really convenient. His mom (Mamma) made us delicious food and did our laundry. 

Mamma’s kitchen

The room was huge, had AC, and the whole experience was way more than we could have hoped for! 

We had our own dedicated tuktuk driver for two days which cost about $17 a day. Could you piecemeal together tuktuk rides for cheaper? Probably, but it wouldn’t have been too much of a difference, and we didnt have to haggle. He also had ice cold water for us after each stop! Totally worth it!

We came to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat. We had no idea what we were in for. Angkor Wat is only one of many temples that Siem Reap Province is known for. To see them all takes a few days. A one day ticket costs $37 for a single day ticket and $62 for a three day ticket. You can also get a week long ticket but three days should be enough unless you’re super hardcore about seeing temples. It does get hot though during the peak season (and probably rains a lit in the off season,) so if you have a lot of time it might be good to get the week pass and visit at your leisure in the early evenings or late afternoon. While we wore our slippers (flipflops) for the majority of our trip, we wore good sturdy closed toed shoes for the temples. We’re glad we did because some of the terrain can be uneven and the stairs steep.

We got up super early to see Angkor Wat on day 2 even though we had already been there the day before. The goal was to see the sun rise behind the main temple. It was incredible. However, this is one of the most popular things to do so we were amongst 300 or so other people who didn’t seem to have much respect for the majesty of the moment (talking loudly,) and who evidently didn’t understand that you can’t brighten up a backlit subject with your camera flash. Other than that, it was amazing!

While Angkor Wat is the largest, it’s hardly the most impressive. Just north of Angor Wat was Angkor Thom where we saw the Bayon and Baphuon temples. 

Outside of Baphuon, Margarite was accosted by an agressive monkey. He rushed her and only stopped when she chucked her water bottle at him in sef defense. Evidently, that was exactly what he was going for. We saw another monkey doing this to two women who were walking ahead of us on our way out. Helmut scared him off and saved the day. These monkeys were crazy. Definitely hide your water bottles and anything else they could snatch from you if you visit this temple. It was the only temple where we had this problem.

We saw a bunch of other temples that were all amazing in their own way. One of the others that stood out was Ta Prohm where all the trees had grown over the ruins. This one was our favorite and photos barely do it justice!

We also went far north to see Banteay Srei, AKA the lady temple. 

It took awhile to get there and the temple interesting but the scenery on the way made it well worth it. It was interesting to see how the people in rural Cambodia live, and it was definitely different from the things we saw in the city.

In the evening, we took a tuktuk to the Riverside Night Market. It was hoppin! Such a vibrant scene and great shopping. The quality seemed better than the Russian Market in Phnom Penh. 

After we were all-templed-out, we hit the Angkor National Museum. It was about $12 to get in and an extra $5 for the audio tour. In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to visit this museum prior to going to the temples as it explained the history of the Kmher empire and also had a lot of information about the religious imagary that we saw earlier. It was very informative and well worth the money.

So far, Siem Reap has absolutely been the highlight of our trip. Such an amazing place and we easily could have spent a few more days wandering around. 

Fried Crickets and Fried Chicken feet

Recreational badminton

S21 Prison and Killing Fields In Phnom Penh

 

We went to the S21 Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields yesterday in Phnom Penh. This is one of those places that everyone should see in their lifetime. It made me feel sad that humans could be capable of such terrible things. The Khmer Rouge killed a quarter of the population (over 2 million people), most of them brutally and violently. We saw where they tortured them and where they dumped their bodies in mass graves. We saw their bones. 

This happened in our lifetime(1975-1979) and their leader, Pol Pot, walked on this earth until he died in 1998. He never saw any consequences.  

Memorial at the Killing Fields. If you look close you can see skulls inside the windows.

S21 Prison

The Prison and the Fields are about 30 minutes apart but doable in one day. Best to go to S21 first for some context. Separate entrance fees for each and we paid for the audio tours which was worth it. Neither museum is the kind of place you want to take photos. There were some survivors inside the prison grounds selling books about their experience. A solemn experience.

The human race needs to figure out how monsters like this can short circuit the minds of others to commit such atrocities. Stalin did it, Hitler did it, Pol Pot did it, but these guys didn’t do it alone. In Cambodia, there were 72,000 other humans who were like, “yeah, let’s brutally kill a bunch of people!” WTF?!?

Look around. Is this happening today? If you can’t see that it is, then maybe that’s part of the problem.

Phnom Penh

Our first impression of Phnom Penh was that is was a lot more modern than we expected. The airport seemed new and getting through immigration was not much of a hassle except for the fact that we didn’t print out our visas which annoyed the officer. He let us through though and just gave us an irritated scowl. We got the visa weeks ago online for something like $30 a piece. It was a much easier process than last time when we had to send our entire passport into the nearest embassy (we wanted to try to visit in 2015 in conjunction with our Vietnam trip but ended up not going.)

We were met with a ton of taxi touts outside the airport trying to get our business but we beelined to the information office to ask which ones were legit. The woman behind the counter arranged one for us for about $15. Getting a grab would have been half the price, but we didn’t want to hassle with trying to figure out where they picked up and we just wanted to get settled.

We stayed at the Plantation Urban Resort and Spa right near the Royal Palace which was really nice and about $80 a night. 

Atrium at the Plantation Urban Resort

This was on the main entrance to our hotel. 

Most anything else in the hotel was overpriced by cambodian standards (restuarant, spa sevices etc,) but they had an awesome free breakfast and a nice pool. 

For whatever reason, everyone takes U.S. Dollars as well as Cambodian Riel. $1=4000 riel. You could give them American money and they would give you riel or a combo of riel and dollars for change so there was no reason to go to the money excange. We knew this in advance so we made sure we had smaller bills that were in good shape before we even left the States (word on the street is that some people won’t take dirty or ripped money.)

We learned real fast that the way to get around is by tuk tuk, but they best way is by using the Grab app which is much like Uber. Using Grab, we could pretty much go anywhere for about $1.50 or less. You could get a car via Grab as well but it costs more, and there’s just something about putting your life in the hands of a local Cambodian guy driving a modified scooter that makes you feel like you’re livin’!

Cambodian’s version of Home Depot?

One thing we noticed while cruising around the city is that there were a huge number of Toyotas. Mostly Prius’s, Land Cruisers, and Lexus lx470s (which are fancy land cruisers.) They definitely have dominated the Phnom Penh market! Strangely, there seemed to be more lexus lx 470s than anything, and specifically ones from 2000. We only know this because this is the exact car Margarite drives. Usually it’s quite rare to see one in the wild, but in Cambodia you could look in any direction at any time and see more than one. It was really weird. Any other car we saw seemed to be luxury cars like Land Rovers. So there was a weird divide in the kinds of cars there. It was either a tuktuk or some kind of motorbike, and then everything else was either a Prius or a super high end car. We even saw what appeared to be a lamborghini dealership! 

The food was good, but not as good as the food in Thailand. Their national dish is a fish dish called Amok which was tasty. One thing you could get about anywhere were smoothies. Coconut, mango, passionfruit, banana, you name it! We even saw avocado smoothies which we didn’t try. 

We ate at a couple restaurants and it was super cheap. I think the first time it cost less than $12 for the two of us and there was more food than we could eat. We got some stir fry noodles from a cart for $1.25, and it was delicious!

Just like in Thailand and Morrocco, many locals see dollar signs popping over your head and are always trying to get you to take their tultuk or their tour or buy their simcard. 

A good phrase to know is “T’lai Na” which means “so expensive!” As you walk away, the price will suddenly become much cheaper.

We hit the Russian Market to look around which was definitely an experience! If you get clausterphobic or can’t stand strong smells, best to leave this one off your list, but we thought it was super interesting. Like a chaotic indoor swapmeet/food market/craft fair.

 They crazy part was the wet market area where there were old ladies butchering meats and fish on the floor. I’m not sure I would ever want to eat anything from there, but it certainly was interesting!