Siem Reap, Cambodia (2008)

We had an early morning flight to Siem Reap, so we were down to breakfast by 7am. Everything went smoothly except we were a bit surprised by the departure tax; luckily it was only $6 per person. Despite it only being a 35 minute flight, Siem Reap Airways served us a cucumber and egg sandwich, fruits, and juice. I had a little scare onboard when I discovered my hands were shaking and thought I was getting sick, but then D pointed out it was likely the four cups of delicious coffee that I had had with breakfast. Oops.

We were checked into our hotel, La Maison D'Angkor, well before noon. The hotel staff was happy to arrange a tuk-tuk driver for us for the rest of the day (12-6pm) for $15. For lunch we had the driver take us to Shadow of Angkor, where the food was okay but the fresh watermelon juice were delicious.

Afterwards we started on the temples. First we went to the gigantic Angkor Thom, where we saw the famous Bayon with the giant faces:


Afterwards we proceeded to the Baphuon, the Terrace of Elephants, and the Terrace of the Leper King. I was most impressed with the Bayon; the Baphuon seemed like it was in worse shape, and it took us awhile to find the elephants, as they were not well marked:



From there we went to Ta Prohm and Phnom Bapkeng. Ta Prohm was my favorite; it's known as the jungle temple because there are giant trees growing all over it. I think it was also used to film part of the first Lara Croft movie.



Phnom Bapkeng was primarily popular with tourists because it offers a nice view of Angkor Wat at sunset. I was not that impressed with the view there, but I could have been biased because of the huge crowds.


We started again the next day at 4:30am in order to try to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat. We got there at 5:45am which was in plenty of time, but we still had to jostle for position among all of the tour groups and other early risers.


After sunrise, we stuck around and explored Angkor Wat for several hours, before driving out to Banteay Srei (we'd hired a car for the day for 55 USD), which is loosely translated as "citadel of women". I liked it very much; it was small but full of beautiful intricate carvings.


We also visited Kbal Spean, which is a site consisting of lots of stone lingas (phallic symbols) around a river. It required some hiking (35-40 minutes) to get to the carvings, and I wasn't too impressed by the carvings, but apparently they are notable because there are so many of them.

The driver that we'd hired turned out to speak English pretty well, which was an unexpected bonus. He gave a running commentary during the long drives, from which we actually learned a lot. For instance, it sounded like there was a lot of foreign investment in Cambodia (mostly Vietnamese and Korean) which meant that the locals weren't profiting that much from all the tourism. A daily wage of 1-2 USD was considered "good". He also had some comments about local politics which were over my head, and took us off the main roads to show us some traditional houses and villages (more like clusters of houses).


When we got back to the Siem Reap area, we went to Preah Khan and Neak Pean. The first was great; there were endless rectangular doors and tons of carvings. I remarked to D that it felt like it could have been computer-generated (which he thought was super geeky of me). Neak Pean consists of four "healing ponds" with an island in the center. It was nice to look at (and nearly deserted!) but I hear that it is much cooler when the ponds are full.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2008)

I'm starting up again with the transcription of my old travel journals, with our trip to Cambodia and Vietnam in spring 2008.

We flew to Phnom Penh through Taipei so we had time for some Taiwanese snacks during our three-hour layover. We arrived shortly after noon and took a $9 taxi to the Pavilion Hotel. We tried to get some local money from the ATM but it dispensed US dollars! We were a little annoyed that we'd just paid extra fees to get the same money we could have brought from home, but laughed it off. We soon discovered that everyone did in fact accept USD and in fact gave change in USD, except for very small amounts, which were returned not in US coins but in paper "riel". The accepted conversion rate was 4000:1.

The hotel was quite nice, with decent air conditioning and solar panel heated water. The bathroom was new and clean. There were also prominent signs stating that sex tourists were not welcome. I guess it must be a pretty bad problem in Cambodia. There was a funny incident where D tipped the bellboy $1 for carrying our four bags; he was worried that it was too little, but realized it must have been too much as the boy was profusely grateful and was super eager to help us during the rest of our stay.

We left the hotel at 2pm to do some sightseeing...big mistake. It was very hot (probably mid-90s) and very humid. We went to the National Museum and Royal Palace, hoping for some time indoors, but were more impressed with the gardens than the (non air-conditioned) exhibits. We had some trouble finding the "silver pagoda" which turned out not to be silver.

National Museum:



Royal Palace:




For dinner we went to a restaurant called Khmer Borune. We ordered three dishes:
- lakh lakh beef: cubed chunks of beef with onions and tomatoes, served with vinegar-y sour pepper sauce, very good
- nataing pork: my favorite, cooked with coconut curry and served over crispy rice cakes
- palm sugar fish: served with a caramelized sauce (I didn't try it)


For dessert we were given free mangos, plus we ordered Khmer cake, which was also yummy; it seemed to have been made with coconut and maybe mung bean. Overall we were quite happy with our meal, and had a fun time chatting with a neighboring couple from New Mexico who had just returned from Siem Reap and gave us some useful tips, such as the going rate for tuk-tuks ($2).

After eating, we walked to the supermarket to get water, since we were still dehydrated despite drinking tons of water at dinner. Everyone seemed to cross the street completely haphazardly, so navigating the street after dark was a bit of an adventure. The streets were also a little sketchy looking, but luckily we didn't have far to walk to get back to our hotel.

The next day we were slightly jetlagged so we were up by 6am. We got ready in time to have an excellent free continental breakfast. My favorite item was the delicious fresh passionfruit juice with lots of crunchy seeds; it was a little bit like drinking pearl milk tea. The coffee was also very good, and there were baguettes and a nutty bread, served with fresh fruit, jams and good butter. Around 8am we started walking towards Wat Phnom.


It was about a 25-minute walk, but the weather was much nicer in the morning so we didn't mind. The wat itself was not spectacular but rather charming. The caretakers were very friendly and smiled at us a lot.






Afterwards we grabbed a tuk-tuk to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which chronicles a lot of the atrocities that occurred during the Khmer Rouge regime.


It was sad and depressing but educational and I guess worth seeing.



We decided against going to the Killing Fields though; we'd had enough history by then and the tuk-tuk drivers were a little too eager to take us there. We got lunch at the adjacent Boddhi Tree Umma where the service was excellent and the (Western-style) food was fairly tasty. We had a nice conversation with an older American couple there who were living in Cairo. After eating we grabbed another tuk-tuk back to the hotel to hide out during the hottest hours of the day.

For dinner, we ate at a restaurant called "Friends" which is also a training program for street children. The food was good and we were hungry so we had a lot of it: sweet potato fries with chili mango sauce, pork and beef meatballs with rice, mango salad with sesame and peppers, "fish" cakes with rice noodles (refreshing!), and Cambodian chicken curry (good but generic). The portion sizes were large for tapas and we couldn't finish, but it was reasonably priced at $18.50 total, especially given that part of the proceeds were going to the training program.

We finally made it to the Russian Market after dinner, but we were less than impressed; the silk goods weren't of very high quality, and the sculptures and trinkets struck me as cheesy. There was an open air food court of sorts behind the market, where lots of locals were snacking, but there were tons of flies, so despite our usual affinity for street food, we passed.

On the way home we were stopped a block away by a police barricade. We couldn't figure out why until we saw a huge wedding next door to our hotel. They were playing surprisingly modern music (lots of guitar), and there were hundreds of guests, dozens of police cars, and everything was decorated elaborately with lots of flowers.

the caffeine bug

Speaking of unforeseen consequences...

A couple of weeks ago, while sitting on an airplane bound for Siem Reap, I started to feel lightheaded. I also discovered my hands were shaking, and began to worry that I was coming down with some crazy tropical disease. I had a bad fifteen minutes of it, until I realized it was probably from the three cups of delicious (and apparently very strong) coffee that I had had with breakfast.

As an aside, the coffee in both Cambodia and Vietnam was excellent. Must be from having been occupied by the French.

unpacking and packing

I spent the last two weeks on vacation in Southeast Asia (Cambodia & Vietnam) and got back into town Sunday in time to meet up with some friends for dinner. I'll be in town for six days and then am headed to Argentina for another week, so I'm basically packing and unpacking at the same time. Feels a little odd.

The trip was awesome; I found Angkor Wat lived up to the hype, had a great time in the Mekong Delta seeing the rural Vietnamese villages, took a billion photos of Halong Bay, and of course, ate lots and lots of yummy local food. I ended up taking almost 2000 photos, so I probably won't have time to sort through them for a couple of weeks yet. Many more details to come.