Well, Siem Reap is one
of the places I have looked forward to the whole trip and I was
worried, after some people's reports, that it wouldn't live up to
expectations, but it actually ended up surpassing them! Definitely
one of my favourite places in the world!
Siem Reap, home to
Angkor Wat, is the national pride of Cambodia, even the Cambodian
flag has a picture of Angkor Wat on it. Angkor, literally meaning
'city' is an ancient city that was re-discovered in the 19th
century in the middle of the dense jungle and it is one of the top
three 'lost cities' in the world (after Macchu Picchu). It has such
an amazing feel to it. The whole of the ancient city, consisting of
hundreds of temples, is part of a huge national park and you buy a
pass to get in and can visit as many of the temples as you like. We
opted for the three day pass, which could be used over three days
(doesn’t have to be three consecutive days).
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| Exploring the temples |
So, we got to Siem Reap
the town, late at night and checked into our hotel which was number
one on trip advisor. It was lovely. Very peaceful, clean, all the
amenities, and very friendly staff who always said hello to us and
greeted us by our names. The night we got there, Jemma felt ill and
it was raining outside, so we decided to order room service and we
had fish and chips and burger and chips brought up to the room. It
was scrumptious. The next day, we spent having a lie in, exploring
the town, and getting our bearings. The 4* hotel next door had a pool
that you could use, so I also went for a swim in that. The town of
Siem Reap its self is very touristy, but that's why I liked it. Lots
of Western food, and Western bars and a nice atmosphere, with night
markets selling souvenirs and fairy lights in the street.
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| Main street in Siem Reap |
On our second day in
Siem Reap, we started our templing. The weather was really hot during
the whole of our stay there and we took a tuk tuk from outside of our
hotel. We we hired the driver for the whole day to take us around the
temples. He was so lovely. First stop was not Angkor Wat, but some
other amazing mystical temple set in the middle of the jungle. It was
gorgeous. The best temple I have ever seen. The temples of Angkor
have such a mystical feeling to them. Second stop was the Tomb Raider
temple where they filmed Lara Croft with Angelina Jolie.
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| Tomb Raider temple |
That one was
mind blowing. You see huge trees and roots growing out of the temple
walls and wrapping around the temples – it is like nothing else I
have ever seen! It was very impressive and showed the power of
nature. It also felt like you could imagine what the person who
discovered it felt like because it was literally hidden in amongst
the jungle. It was stunning. The next few days consisted of
experiences like this – riding around in the tuk tuk through the
stunning Cambodian countryside (rice fields, banana trees, little hut
villages) and getting out to explore these hidden ancient temples. We
stopped for lunch at a really nice restaurant and had a break there,
before continuing with more templing in the afternoon.
On the second day, we
got up at 4am to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. I was a bit
worried we wouldn't make it in time, as the hotel forgot to make
Jemma's packed breakfast so we had to wait for it, but we made it
there just in time to see this:
It wasn't as good as it
could have been, due to cloud cover, but it was still stunning.
A lot of people had
told us they were disappointed with Angkor Wat because there were too
many tourists there. Luckily for us, we were there in the low season
(rainy season, although we actually had fantastic weather), so there
weren't as many tourists there – peak season there are 7000(!)
tourists a day at Angkor Wat, when we were there, there were
supposedly 2000, but we hardly saw any. The only downside to the
temples, which wasn't too much of a downside, was all the sellers
there -lots of little kids trying to sell you books, bracelets etc.
We ended up giving in a few times; once because a little girl about 4
chased our tuk tuk for about half a mile and I couldn't resist her
(she was so cute). Every temple you go to though, you hear 'Madame! 2
for $1, you buy me, you help me, 3 for $1!'
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| Another day, another temple |
It is similar to this
in the town of Siem Reap too, and one night when we went out, we had
one small boy holding a baby in his arms, approach us and ask us to
buy him milk 'I only want food not money'. So we went with him to the
supermarket, thinking, ok, maybe we'll just buy him one bottle of
milk for 20p, but no, he wanted a tin of powdered baby milk off the
shelf with no price on it (the only thing in the whole shop with no
price on it). We asked him how much it was and he said $18. We
sniffed a scam and left straight away. Later that night, I googled it
and found out it is in fact a very common scam, it happens every
night in Siem Reap (we saw it happening to lots more people whilst we
were there and the same boy even approached us the night after).
Basically, the boy takes the tourists into the shop, they buy the
powdered milk for $18 and then the milk gets given back to the shop
to be recycled on the next gullible tourist and the shop and the
beggar split the profits. Considering the average Cambodian makes
around $100 a month, this is an extremely profitable scam!
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| Day at pool |
In between our three
days of templing, we gave ourselves a day's rest, lying by the pool.
I was getting templed out by this point. I also hit my head on one of
the low doorways in a temple and it really hurt! I was happy to have
a day's break. We ate in the town every night and one night we went
to a restaurant that had a live show of typical Cambodian dancing on.
We also treated ourselves to a massage one night (a 'seeing hands'
massage, by the blind). It was something I'd wanted to do every since
I'd seen it advertised but it was absolutely terrible. They spent 20
minutes just pinching our arms and then at the end of the massage
they slapped my back with brute force. They said it was a Japanese
shiatsu massage, it felt like amateur torture – it was awful! We
did laugh a few times though, not at them, but with them, because
they kept knocking the massage oil on the floor and then couldn't
find it (because they were blind) so we had to keep reaching down for
it. I had to burst out laughing at one point when I looked across and
saw the blind woman battering Jemmas feet. Jemma was wincing in pain.
I burst into raucous laughter, because I knew I'd be getting the same
a few minutes later.
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| River front at night in Siem Reap |
Overall, I loved Siem
Reap and the Temples of Angkor, it made me love Cambodia. It was much
cleaner than the rest of Cambodia – no litter etc and very friendly
people. Probably all a show for the tourists, but still, it was nice.
I would highly recommend it as a holiday destination for anyone who
wants to visit Asia!
More photos: Angkor Wat
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