(or Kampuchea)

Departure (To Siem Reap)

The flight was really early in the morning departing Singapore at 6 am, therefore had to be at the airport at insane hours (i.e. 4 am). Took a cab from my place full of excitement, though also rather sleepy, cos’ that was also the day that I had an interview in the afternoon which lasted 3 and half hours. Nonetheless, nothing was going to spoil my mood, I waited too long for a holiday. (“,) First stop for the trip was Siem Reap, to visit the Temples of Angkor, which includes the renown Angkor Wat.

Arriving at Siem Reap International Airport, it was cool and peaceful. The airport was small and there wasn’t much people. A warming sign greeted us in the land of Cambodia. Sitting on our tuk tuk, we arrived to our guest house – Golden Temple Villa. This guest house cost us US$18 per night and it comes with full services, TV, hot water, air conditioning. It has a nice restaurant. Overall, it was a decent and nice gust house, but then for US$18, we are paying quite a bit. They even arrange for a tuk tuk to pick us up from Siem Reap airport. This tuk tuk also was our “official” driver for the 3 days that we stayed in Siem Reap. I still can’t pronounce his name!

Floating Village

There was 3 routes that the guest house people recommended – red, green and blue – and usually in order. However, I decided that I did not want to follow their order and so decided to head out to the floating village first and also see one of the southern temples, the older temples first, and leave the nicer temples for the later dates so that we do not get too bored by temples. Which, indeed, turned out to be a better idea. Cost for the tuk tuk driver was US$10 + US$10 + US$15 = US$35 for the 3 days. Quite expensive in my opinion considering the amount of work that the driver puts in and the time spent, since we tour the temples rather quickly and his day would be done. Oh well!

The village was a Vietnamese village apparently, or so I think. It is quite amazing how they can live on the basin of the Ton Le Sap. The water is not exactly clean, but they use it for everyting, cleaning, washing, excretion, etc … hmm …

After a long bumpy ride back to the Old Market area, we went in serach of lunch on food. With a lonely planet guidebook in hand, we scoured the place and landed up at Khmer Kitchen Restaurant. It is quite a clean and pleasant place and it is featured in the Lonely Planet.

Preah Ko

Our first temple of purchasing the tickets for the Temples (US$40 for 3 days) was Preah Ko, which
was at the southern part of Siem Reap, away from the main cluster of temples.

Bakong

Sitting on our “trusty” tuk tuk, our next destination was Bakong. It was nearing 4 pm and the heat of the day was still lingering all around! One thing I noticed about roads in Cambodia are that they are straight and stretch on for long distances. This is just a small example of how roads in Siem Reap are like. Last stop for the day was the Bakong Pagoda. Not very spectacular and mostly rebuilt structures.

At the end of the day, went back to the guest house to rest from the HEAT. Lucky got air conditioning. Dinner was at another small restaurant, Traditional Khmer Food Restaurant. Tried the amok fish there and it was quite good.