Siem Reap - Cambodia

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That´s it! The three of us (Maria, Susana and myself) made it to Cambodia in one piece.

Leaving Vietnam was a bit tricker than anticipated. We forgot we had to return a piece of paper they gave us when we entered the country. Maria and myself had checked it with the rest of the luggage so we didn´t have it with us and Susana never got to even see it so there we were at customs and without the bloody paper.

It was my first bribe! I´m not very good at haggling and getting the best price but I think I was very smooth and convinced the customs officer to ignore the paper for $10 and after he accepted I asked him whether the deal could be extended to Maria and Susana, he chated for a little while with his colleague and said yes...so 2 minutes later and $30 lighter we left with our passports properly stamped.

Siem Reap it´s a big change to the system, quite different from Vietnam...it´s more tourist oriented, prices are all quoted in dollars and they are considerably higher than in Vietnam...goodbye to those lunches for 3 people for under 2 €. On the positive side...no more haggling to death for a pack of chewing gums...fix prices again...

I think I´m gonna miss all the theater that came with the haggling...:-)

We are fully booked for the next 3 days. We are gonna visit the Angkor temples. We´ve got our own guide (for the 3 of us) and a driver with a tuck-tuck for the 4 of us, Maria, Susana, the guide and myself. A very decent price for all that. After seeing the prices around I was expecting to pay an arm and a leg for visiting the temples.


UPDATE 14-JAN-2010


So we made it to Siem Reap and we had a car, sent by the hotel, waiting for us outside the airport.

Most of the time in these countries you get offered a car to pick you up at the airport for free, not because of your wonderful telephone skills or because your charming personality left a warm feeling in the hotel personnel and they can't wait to see you.

No... what *really* happens is that if you take a random taxi and tell the taxi driver where you wanna go...he'll tell you that that hotel you want to go to was burnt down last week (or some other natural or not so natural disaster) but don't worry, today is your lucky day because he knows of a good hotel, cheaper than the one you wanted to go...so he can take you there instead if you want...then the hotel owner pays the taxi driver his usual fee and the guy splits leaving you in your new hotel with your fingers crossed :-)

So in order to avoid this, in many occassions, reputable hotels offer to send you a free car to pick you up so that some sleazy taxi driver doesn't take you to some other hotel.

This time we had a good hotel, no swimming pool but we had wifi in our rooms, it was clean and it had a cool look and feel to it. The prices for excursions, tuk-tuks etc were among the cheapest we found in Siam Reap so, all in all it was a pretty good hotel.

This was the chilling out area...and chilling out we were...

Siem Reap it's a weird place since due to the tourism it has been developed much more than the rest of the country.

The whole town seems to have been "designed" to accomodate the influx of tourists pouring in every day. Lots of restaurants accomodating any and every flavour from Cambodian food to Italian, Indian, etc... Massage parlours, Apsara dancers, one zillion tuk-tuks, book stores with only foreign books...

Prices are also quite high in comparison with the rest of the country and always quoted in dollars.

You always had to use a mix of dollars and Cambodian Riels. The currency system worked like this: 4000 Riels were the equivalent to 1 dollar so if the price was $1.50 you would pay 1 dollar and 2000 Riels, or 2 dollars and they would give you back 2000 Riels.

Although prices were considerably higher than the rest of the country they were still quite reasonable for us, instead of $2-$3 for food per person in Siem Reap we had to start paying around $5-$10 per person. On the positive side, because all restaurants were for tourists, the service and the food was of a very high standard, some places even had a band singing.

They also had lots of places with these fish that clean up your skin (they eat all the dead cells of your skill), I had seen them before in Thailand but it seem to be far more popular here. You stick your feet in a small pool filled with these little fish and they come to your fish and start eating away...it doesn't hurt at all but it feels weird...you can feel them biting...

After haggling for a little while we managed to get the three of us in the pool with the fish + a massage for one dollar each. María was the first one to try them...unfortunatelly for her as soon as I put my feet in the pool all the fish in it came to me leaving María with two or three little fish circling around her feet. Clearly she takes too much care of her feet so the poor fish were starving with her...thank God I was there to feed them properly. :-)

I think after me they weren´t very hungry anymore...

Back to the trip. We spoke to one of the guys in the hotel and we were offered several excursions, in the end we opted for a three day visit to the temples...although in the end we only did 2 days but I'm getting ahead of myself...

Below is a map with most of the temples. The first day included a visit to the outter ring, the second day a visit to the temples which are the farthest away and the third day the rest.

So, the following day early in the morning, we had breakfast at the hotel... we met with our guide and driver, we hopped into the tuk-tuk and off we went to Angkor Wot...

There are way to many pictures from all the temples we've visited and it's hard to tell now which is which after all this time so this is just a small selection of some of the temples.

I think apart from Angkor Wot, the one that we found more interesting is the temple with the trees. All these temples were abandonned for hundreds of years and only when they were re-discovered the jungle was cleared out and the temples cleaned up and in more recent times they have started working on the reconstruction of some of the temples. In some cases, trees grew up in the middle of the temple and they did so for hundreds of years.

On the way back the guide stopped by the road where there were making and selling some products from sugar cane. They extract the contents of the sugar cane and put it to boil on a big wok, once it becomes liquid they either put it in pots like peanut butter or they let it cool down and cut it off as sweets which they then sell for 3 packets for a dollar...

I've always considered myself to have sweet tooth and everyone that knows me would testify to this, but I must admit that even I found these sweets extremely sweet. Nonetheless we bought 3 packets (one for each) and then María with the intent of killing everyone with some minor insuline deficiency at her work decided to buy 15 packets...The girl selling the stuff couldn't believe her luck! :-)

Packaging + sweets

That night when we got back to the hotel we decided to go and see the Apsara dancers so we went to a place our guide recommended. The place offered a big buffet, despite of the huge selection available to us, food wasn't as good as in the restaurants but we weren't there for the food. :-)

The folloing day we decided to have breakfast in a local bakery instead of the hotel...and it was so good we repeated the following day. :-)

After breakfast, back in the tuk-tuk and off to the temples although this time we decided to try the ballon. Fantastic views.

Angkor Wot seen from the ballon

We were tempted by the elephants...but we didn't do it in the end.

Random photo. Travelling by tuk-tuk

This is another random photo. Susana in her role as wedding photographer couldn't resist another bride. Apparently this is the typical wedding dress in Cambodia.

On the third day we had already visited all of the most important temples and it was so hot that we decided to stay in and relax, go for a walk in town and do some minor haggle-haggle-purchase...

When it was the time to flight to Phnon Penh, we got a car to drive us to the airport and we got ready for the last stage of the trip...the capital...