We started our time in Cambodia with it’s most famous attraction, Angkor Wat. Time for some temple exploration!
Day 138: The day long journey to Siam Reap
We were up and packed by 7 to allow ourselves time to order and eat breakfast. We splashed out on the continental again which came with bacon this time 😊. We were a little short of time, but luckily the super lovely owner of the restaurant and guesthouse was able to change our leftover kip for USD and saved us a job.
After a quick march to the ferry stop a couple of hundred metres away we boarded the longtail boat for the last time and enjoyed our final ride through the islands. We are sad to leave this place, and Laos, it really is so relaxing here, and the river and its islands are perfect.
Arriving at the beach of Ban Nakasang, we retraced our steps of a few days before and walked the half km up to the bus station. In theory the bus was due to depart at 9am, but as that time came and went it became obvious that was not the case.
Normally, I would find a late bus rather stressful, and be worrying about what that means for lunch time (my life is oriented around mealtimes 😊), but after this spell through Laos either I’m feeling so relaxed that I don’t care, or I’m learning to cope with delay and uncertainty. Hopefully the latter!
The bus finally arrived at around 10.45 and left around 11am. We were expecting a full sized bus but they’d sent this little thing as it’s cheaper to run and there weren’t enough people to fill the big bus.
This little bus was totally full, and we didn’t get on quick so we ended up at the back. We couldn’t use the whole back seats though, that’s where the spare tyre lives!
It was a bumpy ride on the back seat, with seemingly no suspension. Rather jarring. Luckily it was just 50 minutes to the border. Despite it being late, our choice of bus was a good one as the same bus goes all the way to Siam Reap, so we could leave our bags on the bus as it went through, rather than lugging them through the border with us like many have to, which we were very pleased about as all in all it’s a pretty long, totally unshaded walk to the other side. Not pleasant in the midday heat even without bags!
When we reached the border, our bus ‘co-ordinator’ started to inform us that the bus would not wait for long for us, but a man (who I thought was American but was actually Nordic!?) interrupted saying that the bus would of course wait. We were a little confused at the time, but after getting through realised that the ‘co-ordinator’ was trying to stop us from trying to wait out the extra scam charges. We’d read about these and knew that without sitting around for hours and possibly missing our bus, we would have to pay. We had accepted our fate. Others had not, or were totally unprepared for the crossing.
When we arrived at the first border checkpoint, there were still people there who had been with us at the bus stop and left on the minibuses over half an hour before our bus had left. All that has to happen here is that they stamp your passport with the exit stamp. This should be very quick and free, but this border is known for its scams, and they charge you $2 for each stamp. There was a pretty heated argument going on, and some people seemed to be having trouble moving on. Luckily for us the border people were bored of this argument seemingly and waved us through. The French girls I think tried to ask us not to hand over our passports as they wanted to block the border (?). I’m not sure where that gets them though, as the border guards aren’t going anywhere and are equally happy to sit and chat to each other as they are to stamp passports.
I think the problems were because two had not got their departure forms, which are attached to the visa application forms when you come into Laos. They claimed to have never been given them, and the border people said they had to have it. A stand off. The other couple who weren’t getting through actually had no extra cash for this, and only a few leftover kip, which didn’t amount to enough. We offered to pay this for them, but they refused adamantly. We carried on with the rest of our bus group to the next area.
Visa application forms. I already hate them and we’ve only been through a few countries! Time for scam number 2. Everything online states that the visa is $30, but you aren’t getting one here for less than $35. People were trying the ‘I have no cash’ story, and showing empty wallets, but that just got them a returned passport and a journey to the back of the queue. Rumour is that if you wait long enough they will eventually let you through for $30. We weren’t willing to risk our bus to find out!
Next stage is having your photo taken and giving fingerprints. After this, we exited the building to see one of our bus companions (a man who looked to be in his 70’s!) surrounded by border control and having a discussion about something in his bag. He was miming explosives!
We left him to it and carried on to the border gate, thinking the whole thing is odd. The buildings are all very new, and people must walk through here all the time, but there’s no provisioning for pedestrians, you just walk down the road and have to duck under the car barriers. Odd!
On the other side there are a couple of cafes where we waited for the rest of the group to get through, enjoyed a cold drink, bought a sim card and learned a couple of Cambodian words from the owner. We were pretty sure that everyone was through for a while before the bus actually left. All in all we’d been at the border for an hour and a half, but our journey through had been very smooth and not taken long really. The French ladies all made it through after us, I’m not sure how, and the old man arrived with his bag. Eventually we were off, and with a couple of people only taking a lift to the border, Chris was able to move forwards. I was quite enjoying my raised, spacious, if a little bumpy, seat so I remained on the back row.
Lunch was meant to be at Stung Treng at 1.30pm, but when we arrived there at 2.15pm to drop off the people going to Phnom Pehn rather than Siam Reap it was a quick one, and we were told it was 30 minutes till lunch. Then a while later it was an hour. Then 15 minutes. We eventually stopped at around 4.45pm for lunch! Needless to say we were starving! The restaurant of choice was a real locals place, and with only 20 minutes to get food and eat we had to go for the buffet option.
There were about 8 large saucepans with lids, each holding some kind of food, few of which we could identify. We chose a couple of inoffensive looking ones, a vegetable thing and what turned out to be a spicy fish curry. At least this is a proper Cambodian dish. We weren’t entirely happy about how long it’d been sitting, and the food was barely warm, but it was ok and we had few options. The only other thing we could get were some steamed buns, which the kids love, so we topped up with those. Fingers crossed we don’t get sick.
Back on the bus for the final leg, I’d moved forwards to the front seats after the Phnom Pehn people had left so could speak to the bus operators. We were definitely behind schedule as we had been told we’d arrive at 4.30. They blamed it on a slow transit through the border with lots of people arguing the price and trying to wait it out. Looking at their schedule, the bus shouldn’t have arrived in Ban Nakasang until 10.30 anyway, so it wasn’t actually very late. I’m not sure why we were told 9am and shipped over for that time!
So far the drive through Cambodia had revealed mostly flat, or very gently undulating land, mainly covered in scrubby brush with dotted trees. A lot of this had been burnt, or was burning now. I’m presuming they’re intentional, as many are close to homes, but with so much of the world burning at the moment I hated to see it.
The roads are generally straight so the driver was going pretty fast! Add some overtaking on blind bends and heavy braking and beeping when dogs ran across the road (we ran over a puppy ☹. Not really much the driver could have done though as it was walking across then dilly dallied in the middle and doubled back last minute. Poor puppy.)
The failing light meant we had to go slow to avoid bikes without lights, and the traffic levels really picked up as we neared Siam Reap. We finally arrived at their bus depot at nearly 8! Just a bit late. Luckily there’s Grab Taxi here, who were 1/3 of the price the tuktuk drivers were asking, so we ordered and hopped in, hoping that the Google Maps location for the odd place we’re staying in was correct. It’s in the middle of nowhere on the grounds of a Community School.
Luckily it was simple, and we pulled up and were greeted immediately and shown to our cabin. With few pictures online, we weren’t expecting much, but this place is quite luxurious compared to what we’re used to! It even has a shower curtain! (most bathrooms around here have a wet room thing, and the showers are often right next to or even above the toilet, which means you get wet feet whenever you use the toilet ☹).
We felt like we should eat something before bed, so asked is they could do a plate of fried rice or something. Chenni (our host’s wife) pointed us to the restaurant so we headed there after dumping the bags, to find she’d made a pan of rice, but also brought out soup and a mango. There were a nice English couple staying here who had eaten here before. Apparently they charge $8 each for dinner – I hope that’s not what they charge for this – we were hardly hungry!!
Travelling all day is so tiring, even through it requires no exertion. One of life’s many mysteries, so we all headed straight to bed – it was nearly 10pm!
Day 139: Getting our bearings in Siam Reap
Breakfast this morning was a bit of a disaster. What I thought was a pancake arrived and I spread some Nutella and banana on it before realising it was an omelette! Gross! The omelette itself tasted odd and was full of pepper. And we only got one between four… eventually we asked for another without pepper. The odd taste seemed to be sugar…
Our English friends and another family were at breakfast. They were telling us about being scammed at the floating village. They were charged $20 for a boat ride around the floating village, and then taken out to a raft in the village via a large boat. Then they were told that it was another $20 to get into the smaller boats and be taken around the floating village. Or they could just go back to the shore! The $20 is a lot for this in the first place. Reading up on this later it seems that there are a lot of different scams at the floating villages, which is a real shame and put us off going there at all. They also told us about their tuktuk ride around the temples the day before when their restaurant server asked them if they would be paying for the lunch of their driver. When they agreed, the bill came back with all sorts of things – he’d had a very nice lunch! Except that they hadn’t seem him eating in the restaurant. Presumably he had his own lunch and it was all just fake! You really do have to be careful here!
After talking to the owner, Chheak, we planned to walk the 3km round trip to the market, but the temperature was rising and we wanted to get some jam etc to eat with bread for a cheap or emergency meal so we decided to go into Siam Reap. Whilst we were chatting to him he was cutting up a jackfruit from one of his trees and offered us some. Very nice! Although you get really sticky hands after pulling it from the outer coating.
We asked to be taken to Pub street, which Evie had been very excited by when we drove past the night before – she loved the music and the lights, had been recommended as somewhere where food was reasonably priced. But perhaps our ideas of reasonable pricing were distorted by our time in Laos as they all seemed really expensive at 2-3 times the cost! We quickly left Pub Street and wandered down to one of the parallel streets, where we found food for less than half the price. Much better!
The restaurant happened to be owned by a man who spoke excellent English, and after eating he explained that he has a car and his brother has a tuktuk if we’re looking for drivers. Their prices were quite a bit lower than at the school so we took his business card before leaving. We were using the school’s tuktuk driver today.
He took us to a minimart so we could stock up on bread, jam and peanut butter, before heading out to the Angkor Ticket Office. This place is a massive building, with a car park full of coaches. A really busy area where every person hoping to see any of the Angkor Wat Historical Area temples must come first to buy their pass.
Luckily for us, most people were buying the one day pass so there was a queue there. We wanted a three day pass and there was no queue whatsoever – in and out within 5 minutes! At just gone 5pm it was presumably a busy time as after 5pm you are buying entry for the next day but can enter that evening too for free. Only a couple of temples are open after 5.30 for sunset so some people try to add that in. We had planned to do the same, but the driver informed us that we no longer had time to get to them before the sunset, and suggested stopping off at Angkor Wat instead. We had no idea of distances at this point so agreed. Even through we arrived 3 minutes after closing they let us in for a few minutes for a couple of pictures of the gate whilst the thousands of people piled out. It was a really hazy evening, and the sun disappeared long before it hit the horizon, so it wasn’t shaping up to be a good sunset anyway.
We joined the ranks piling out and then got back in the tuktuk for the last few minutes home.
The evening was spent trying to figure out which temples to go to and which tours to do and then messaging drivers. We managed to set it up in the end.
Day 140: Angkor Wat Temple touring day 1
Breakfast was better this morning, after asking for our omelettes to have no pepper and no sugar. As we walked past Chenni eating her breakfast she offered us a taste of her rice porridge with pickled vegetables and then gave it to us to eat ourselves with a bit of salted fish thrown in. The omelette combined with the pickled veg and rice porridge was actually pretty ok, and better than with the odd bread we were also given.
Our driver, Bong Vin, turned up just after 7.30am throwing us into a panic as we weren’t expecting him until 8!
Our first stop was Baksei Chamkrong. This is a small pyramid style temple, at which there was hardly anyone, even though it’s only 50m from the South bridge to Angkor Thom.
Bong Vin waved us onto the bridge and into the Angkor Thom site, gesturing that he’d be here at the side when we got back. Not knowing any better, we assumed that he had dropped us here to visit the site and wandered down the bridge, enjoying the statues down the side.
The Angkor Thom site is 2km in each direction, so it’s pretty big! This should have been a clue that we were not meant to leave our driver here, but as we’re happy walking we were fine. After looking at the gatehouse, we climbed up onto the old walls and headed down the trail to the West, which is what I’d planned to do all along. The trail was good, with nice views down to the baray/moat.
This was a lovely walk at this time in the morning, cool, peaceful, picturesque with the lotus filled moat to our left, and with plenty of birding opportunities. We only saw locals up here.
At the corner is an old tower, which is pretty wobbly, but was still being used actively whilst we were there.
Continuing North from the corner, we arrived at the West gate and climbed down to follow the road back towards the centre where most the temples are.
No one else was walking this route, although we were passed by many locals on scooters and bikes. At first we were excited to see some macaques on the side of the road, but as we got nearer they started to run at us, and were making rather aggressive noises and swiping at our legs with their arms. We were pretty rattled, and tried to keep moving with the kids in front, who were pretty scared. I was just hoping they would not bite us and force a trip to hospital! Then some came running up from in front and we were surrounded. I’m not quite sure how we’d have gotten out of this, probably by rushing them and shouting, but we didn’t have to find out as one of the patrolling guards sped to us on his bike, shouting at them and he scattered them like bowling pins. We hurried on. They were probably just after food, and the aggression may have been more aimed at the other macaques for dominance rather than at us but we’ll never know.
We took a left turn down a trail, caught a local having a wee – I don’t think he expected to see anyone down there! And then Baphuon appeared in front of us through the trees. It’s a tall temple, and initially seemed to be deserted (which was sadly totally untrue), but it was very exciting to discover it from a little trail through the jungle 😊.
We were on the wrong side so had to walk around the edge (there are a lot of one way systems around the temples to keep things flowing). Then there was a sign saying under 12’s were not allowed! So we sent the kids round to the end and promised we’d be quick!
We enjoyed this one. It was quite busy, but had a tall tower with really steep steps (presumably the reason they ban children??) up and over it.
From here we wandered through some other small overgrown ruins, Tomb Raider style, came across a couple of others and then headed to the Terrace of the Elephants, which was rather underwhelming. Admittedly, we did miss the elephants the first time, as they are at the base of the steps on the opposite side to where we’d approached!
A little further North, we used some of the grimmest toilets I’ve come across in SE Asia so far – perhaps these are not aimed at tourists??
Further on, after the souvenir shops and restaurants, we walked through Preah Pithu and Ta Tuot, which were almost empty, and great for a wander through.
From here, we wandered down the side of the main route, passing another couple of smaller pagodas on the way and ending up at Bayon itself.
Arguably bigger than Angkor Wat, this temple is known for the four faces on many of the towers, so it seems like you are being watched wherever you go. Inside is a labyrinth and you could easily get lost if you wandered off the signposted route through.
Aiden in particular liked this temple, with many carvings and a lot of blissfully cool passageways.
Now to find Bong Vin and figure out lunch. We realised at this point that there were many ramorques driving around here, and minivans, coaches etc, so our assumption that everyone gets dropped off at the gate was clearly wrong! And it had been nearly three and a half hours since we’d left our driver. Realising that he probably hadn’t meant for us to wander off around the temples when we did, we wondered whether he’d still be waiting or not! We had no contact number…
On the way back down the road to the South gate, which is around 1-1.5km, we passed some super cute baby monkeys playing. We didn’t get attacked this time.
About halfway down we were beeped and saw Bong Vin on his motorbike. He’d unhitched the ramorque and come looking for us! He said he’d been driving around trying to find us. Hopefully not for the whole three hours!? He made us wait whilst he went and got the carriage. We were happy to walk, but he was insistent.
Back on board, he drove us back to the area we’d just walked through with restaurants, showed us into one of the many (run by a friend perhaps?) and parked where he could see us.
The food here was pretty good, with big portions, but not cheap. I guess we should expect that when we’re inside such a major tourist draw. Essentially a covered area with rows and rows of tables, seemingly split into mini local restaurants with a sort of pop up kitchen every three rows, which can be packed into a metal container every night. I suspect they all serve the same thing for the same price, but as each only has one or two burners, there’s only so many people they can serve at a time, so it’s split.
We had been warned about scams where the restaurant brings a bill with your drivers lunch on it and asks if you are paying for them. If you agree to, he will probably have had quite a lot of food! When in actual fact it’s likely he had his own sandwich out back. Other guests at our farmstay had this happen to them so we were wary, but we could see our driver clearly sat in his carriage, and not eating. No-one tried to charge us for his food.
At the next temple, Preah Khan, he dropped us at the West entrance and picked us up from the East. Clearly he thought that we’d gotten lost at the last one and had no idea what we were doing as he wanted us to have his number (but we can’t make outgoing calls), or to have ours, but we didn’t know it. In the end he just kept saying to go straight, not left or right, but keep straight through. Bless. We weren’t going to get lost; and had Maps.me to show us where we were.
We were not very impressed with this one initially, as it didn’t offer very much different to the others, but at the East side it gets a lot better with a lot of carvings and a large tree growing over it. Some people have likened this one to Ta Phrom with less crowds…
We had fun exploring the passageways, and this one was not particularly busy.
We bought a new dress for Evie and a baggy T shirt for me from a stall on the way out, before getting back in the ramorque.
The next one, Neak Poun, was a little different, with a long boardwalk out to an island with a temple across a lake/baray. It was a hot walk across, but there were some birds around. The temple inside was pretty non descript – this one’s more about the walk there and the water.
Ta Som was up next and also not overly inspiring – although we were hot and temple fatigue was setting in so we may not have been the best judges…
Mebon was nice, and a bit different, also pretty quiet. We liked the shape of the towers.
Pre Rup is known as a good place for sunset, but we arrived over an hour before so it was pretty quiet. It’s the same shape as Mebon, but bigger.
People were sitting down to claim their places for sunset as we left, we were ready for a cool drink and a rest by this point.
Back at the farmstay we chatted to Bong Vin for ages, trying to figure out what to do for the next few days, and learning about his family and life here. A nice chat, who spoke patchy English so mostly communicated with gestures and drawing numbers in the dirt!
Angkor Wat day 1 conclusion? We’d had a great start, with Angkor Thom well worth a visit and a walk around 😊. Can Angkor Wat itself beat it?
Day 141: Angkor Wat temple touring day 2
Our car was due at 7.30am, so we planned to get down just before 7 to get breakfast ordered, as they take a while to cook it here as usual. But there was no-one in sight. No adults anyway, just their 10ish year old son. Eventually, we asked him where everyone was. He did speak some English, and said that his sister had gone to the market to pick up breakfast. We hoped she’d be back soon…
But she wasn’t, and when we went back to ask again, her brother told us she’d been in a crash and come off her bike! We had some bread in the room, so we decided to eat this quickly as our car was due any moment. I went to tell him, but she was back, and cooking apparently! Bless her. I have no idea where their parents were, but the kids had it all in hand. Our driver arrived, but had to wait whilst they finished cooking and we ate – I wasn’t going to let her cooking go to waste after such an ordeal – the welt on her arm was sufficient to show it was true!
Heading off nearly half an hour later than planned, we arrived at Angkor Wat at around 8.30am, hoping most people would have gone back for breakfast. We were expecting hordes here, but it wasn’t too bad. Don’t get me wrong – there were a lot of people there, but a lot did seem to be just leaving and we could see and get to everything without too much waiting around.
We got lucky with the timings too, as there was barely a queue to get up to the higher level when we arrived, perhaps five minutes? But when we left it was right back down the side. Phew! There’s a system to allow only 100 people on the top level at one time, so it’s a one in one out policy. I’m sure queueing when it’s busy isn’t fun, but it meant that the top felt empty, and you could really take time to appreciate this area and try to imagine it in its full glory, when all the carvings were perfect and it was painted. They’re still very impressive today…
We wandered the rest of the complex inside, looking at the carved walls, and ornate pillars around what looked like baths.
Finding ourselves on the East side, we waited for our chance to get ‘that’ outline picture of Angkor Wat without hordes of other people in it.
Then we walked the shady route around to the South entrance, where there was no – one, but the outline was the same. Time to get creative with the photography…
We left Angkor, feeling possibly a little underwhelmed. Yes, it’s an amazing site, and the detail and carvings are incredible, but maybe not as big in person as we’d expected? Too many people for it to feel magical? Or perhaps, not as interesting as Bayon? Either way, it didn’t feel as special to be here as we’d expected.
Ta Prohm was up next, another much hyped temple and the setting for some of the Tomb Raider film (we watched the bit after and could see where we were which was pretty fun 😊). Known also as the jungle temple, as it has many trees in the site, growing over the walls etc so it looks like it has been reclaimed. We were expecting to love this one, and once we were inside and lost at the back amongst the ruins where there are fewer people we really did love it for the mix of amazing old arches and carvings and the tangles of roots twisting around and through it. It really adds a sense of scale of the amount of time these stones have been there when you can see that massive trees have grown and died here.
There’s also a tower here, in which you thump your chest three times. If you do it in the right tower you hear a very satisfying echo to your thump. According to local legend, this is meant to cure hypertension…(!?).
On the way in and out, the usual sellers come and try to make you come to their shop, or buy their magnets. It’s a little annoying as they don’t really take no for an answer so you just have to walk away. One man was very enthusiastically trying to sell Chris a musical instrument. Not a small one like a pipe, but a massive thing with strings! How does anyone fit that in their bag home??
Having spent a while at the two morning sites, there was no time for a third as we needed to drive North to the ACCB, the Angkor Centre for Conservation and Breeding, which was over an hour North, and the reason we were using a car today.
The drive was pleasant, and we talked to our driver, Roth, on the way. He’s the older brother of Bong Vin, and the man we’d met initially at the restaurant (his elder sister’s restaurant where he helps and tries to drum up business for his brother and himself!) but speaks much better English. He was telling us about the political situation, whereby they live in a democracy, but there’s only one party, and seemingly anyone who tried to run against them meets a sticky end, so the same party have been in for 40 years, even though everyone hates them! Pretty sure that’s not how democracy is meant to work…
On the way, we drove around the biggest roundabout in Cambodia, which is in the middle of nowhere, on a really quiet road, and therefore totally unnecessary in the first place! How odd!
We arrived at the parking for the centre with just under an hour spare before the guided tour at 1pm. Time for lunch. As we wondered over to the handful of restaurants which seemed to be open still, women came out of both trying to persuade us to go in! Both came out at the same time, prices looked similar and both offered free drinks with the meals, which were cheap in the first place. How do you choose? Aiden did it for us by just walking into the one on the right and sitting down. The lefthand one sold icecreams so we promised we’d be back.
We’d also been accosted by the owners of the two clothes shops who were begging us to come and take a look. I did whilst waiting for food to arrive as I wanted one of the light skirts I kept seeing people wearing – they looked comfy and cool…
Buying here was a little stressful, as they were so desperate for us to buy (there were very few tourists here, and they weren’t stopping for food or shopping… We did buy a few things in the end, but only after they reduced the price significantly – they were pretty expensive!
Our tour in the ACCB was nice. As one of the earliest places in Cambodia to try to save animals and try to breed for release into the wild they’re a good organisation. The guide who took us around and talked to us about the animals they have seemed to really care, and they do a lot of work educating locals about looking out for the local wildlife, and not trapping or hunting the endangered species. With a lot of animals being captured for traditional medicines or other odd local traditions like the civits which are kept and fed a diet of only coffee beans. These beans are then collected from the poo, and used to make a type of coffee! Who drinks this stuff? And who found out that this makes it taste ‘better’?
Most the animals here are injured or too tame from being kept by humans and cannot be released into the wild. Where they can, the centre uses them for breeding. There were a load of baby turtles which are being kept under cover until they are a safe size to be relatively immune to predators (their shells only really harden at around 4 years old). Then they are released.
Not quite an animal viewing session like a zoo, with fairly limited species, but very informative, and the chance to see some of the local animals up close.
After walking around for a while to see the animals, they also took us into a cool room to talk a little about some of the animals and show some artefacts, like peacock feathers, a hornbill skull and the difference between male and female turtle shells. The male’s has a concave shape so he can get on top without falling off!
From here we had a bit of a drive back down to Banteay Srei, which is a little different to other temples in the area for the colour of the stone, which has a pink tint, and the delicateness of the carvings.
It was quite busy here, but we could still enjoy it.
At the back, there’s a viewing platform over some fields, and then a nature walk back through some lakes. We went this way, saw no one and got a couple of birds spotted too 😊.
We could have gone on to Banteay Samre, but it was getting close to dinner time so we got a lift straight home. Done with temples!
We spent ages thinking about what to do the next day. In theory we’ve paid for three days in the temples, so we should use it? But many of them are pretty similar, so we had no urges to see any more. We were booked in to do a 2hr drive in the tuktuk out to Beng Mealea, then down to Kampong Khleong to visit a floating village. This was going to be a whole day out and cost at least $70. Did we really want to do it?
In the end we decided no, and also that we were fed up with our homestay, which was so far out of town but expensive for meals. A chill day with a pool was what we needed, and cheap restaurants within walking distance. We found another place to check into and cheekily asked if we could check out a day early. We got a full refund for the night which was so nice of them 😊.
Time for our last sleep here. We had a couple of unexpected visitors come to see us off…
Day 142: Time for a stint in the pool
Our final breakfast was the best yet, with two omelettes free of sugar or pepper, 2 bread each, and bananas, oranges and some little green mini apple things (which only Chris liked). Clearly they aren’t holding our early check out against us!
We used their driver to get us into town (slightly more expensive, but the money goes to a better cause in theory, helping to fund the school).
As he pulled up, we saw the sign for our hotel, and continued in to what we thought was the entrance. Agoda claimed we were getting an 80% discount on the normal price (doubtful!) and the place had looked ok in the pictures, but we were amazed by how nice it was! We were asked to sit down and brought delicious lemon and lime welcome drinks, with ice and lemongrass stalk straws and an ice cold towel. They started to ask us about the kind of tours we’d like whilst we were checked in. The kids scouted and reported that the pool looked amazing. Perfect!
Except it wasn’t ours – they asked for our booking confirmation as they couldn’t find us and then informed us that this was not our hotel ☹.
They were nice about it, but didn’t help us out with our bags as they had on the way out! Heading back out, there was an alley to the side which had our hotel’s name above it. Walking down and into the dark reception area was pretty sad! We got a free welcome drink here too, an orange juice in a basic glass with a plastic straw. Not quite the same!
Still, the rooms were ok, the restaurant and pool out the back were still way above our usual standard and there was a sign that offered $0.50 per draft beer and a 25% discount off an already reasonably priced menu. So it wasn’t all bad! This sort of place is where we belong really.
We had lunch here, which was pretty yum, some of us took a few dips in the pool, and we chilled out and did some decent time on maths, writing and Spanish with the kids.
We had planned to go out to Pub Street in the evening and try the night market as Evie had thought that looked really exciting, and we should leave the hotel really and see Siem Reap right? Except Evie was not herself, and very tired all day. Her eyes went crazy itchy after lunch and so we sent her for a lay down in the air con room with a damp towel on her face. A good excuse to stay where we were, even though she did feel a bit better after cooling off. Some sort of heat stroke from our two temple days??
We were meant to be leaving for Banteay Chhmar the next morning, but decided to stay for another day of pool and good internet, as the next place might have none, and then family are joining us in Phnom Pehn so we won’t have as much time for blogging or learning… It did feel a little wrong to be so close to the temples of Angkor Wat and not head back to them for our final ticket day, but we’d all have been doing it out of duty, and where’s the fun in that?
We watched a film together, enjoying the wifi reaching the bedrooms and then went to bed.
Day 143: Another lazy day in Siem Reap
Having decided to stay another day to do more focused learning and catch up on blogging (how am I so far behind right now??) in our place with a pool, air con, and cheap beers and food, we did very little of note today, and nothing exciting happened. We had some more of the chips from the night before as they are simply the best chips we’ve had travelling, and extremely good even by British standards (best chips ever? It’s possible!), booked our tickets out to Banteay Meanchey and got a couple of blog posts up. Phew – blogging/writing a journal and editing your photo’s on the road is quite a time commitment.
We also had quite a long chat about our travels so far and reconsidered our planned route. We’re contemplating our next steps when we get back, and, being a starter rather than a finisher, that means I’m itching to get them started now rather than finish travelling.
We’re planning to write more of a post about this, and are very interested to know if we’re odd, or if most people doing long term travel feel the same. Watch this space. We’re both in the same place though seemingly. We’re not loving it as much as we’d thought we would. To everyone out there who is looking at the Instagram photos that probably sounds ridiculous, as some of the things we’ve done and seen are super amazing, and we haven’t had as many bad days as I’d thought. None of us have been really sick, and the travel days have been fine. But we find ourselves questioning why we’re here all the time. Is it worth it? Why are we not full of joy at the experience? We don’t have all the answers yet, and maybe we never will. I do think I have learned more patience, and chilled out on the planning need though, both of which will be very worth it if they stay with me when I return to the real world though!
Tomorrow we move on to Banteay Chhmar, another Angkorian temple which is further out and therefore receives few visitors. We’re hoping to get more into the culture of Cambodia by staying in a homestay and spending time with locals. Or if you missed Laos, check out our super relaxing travels in the 4000 islands. Think beaches, kayaking and waterfalls. Bliss!