THE RACHELEN PROJECT
SIEM REAP
The "lake"
13th May 2016
Welcome to Cambodia! I'm doing this quite soon after the last one because I've got a fair bit to write about.
The border crossing went as smoothly as we could hope for yesterday. I'd read quite a lot about it before we came so knew about a few of the common scams. We dodged a some and put up with a couple for sake of ease. The worst part was realising I'd lost about £30 at the money exchange point; I wasn't familiar enough with the currency at the time to work it out quickly enough.
From the border we took two buses to Siem Reap. We met a few other tourists and made friends with a German girl called Nathalie. We made it here in about 3 hours and after a very bumpy journey, got to our hostel and found that it has a pool! We were also bumped up to a private room as the dorms were full. For £2.70 a night you can't complain.
Cambodia feels hotter than Thailand; we're getting through 4-5 litres a day and still get wrinkly fingers. The local people often look amused when we walk past with bright red faces and the kids get so excited, waving and shouting hello whenever they see us.
Siem Reap is an odd town, but very pleasant. There's a night market in the centre which was built in 2012 entirely for tourism, but you'd have no idea it wasn't always part of the city. The locals are friendly and you get the impression it's beginning to thrive on a recent burst of tourism.
Four miles out of town is a different story. Yesterday, Helen had to sort out some things with her bank back at the hostel, so Nathalie and I rented some bikes (a dollar a day!) and the lady in the shop recommended going to see a lake just south of Siem Reap. On the way we passed through some incredibly poor areas. Kids were playing in heaps of rubbish and the houses were made out of mismatched pieces of corrugated metal. A lot of the houses are on stilts, ready for the rainy season, with large gaps between the floorboards. At one point a kid ran in front of my bike, forcing me to stop. In my basket I had my camera and phone, but he just reached in and stole my water. It's unbelievable that it was less than 4 miles from Siem Reap.
Apparently neither Nathalie or I are very good at reading the scale of a map and going to see the 'lake' was a 19 mile round trip on bumpy dusty roads in midday sun. And when we got there, it was a pit of mud. On the way back we went through a herd of buffalo and a man on a motorbike invited us into his home (we declined). It was good to get out of town though, and the soreness from the ride made our evening swim feel amazing.
It started thundering at about 6. It got quite cool in the evening; down to 32 degrees, and we walked into the night market with Helen for a couple of drinks. Everywhere does 50 cent pints. Interestingly, about the currency - they mix it with US dollars so you can pay in either or both. It's easy to get confused and you have to make sure you know it well in order to not be ripped off. $1 is 4000 riel and £1 is 6000 riel.
The flexibility with dollars and riel is very unusual, despite making it easier for tourists. There are a lot of amputees who play music in town to raise money for themselves and others who have been injured or killed by undetonated landmines.
We were going to go to Angkor Wat today but we woke up too late, so instead we're wandering around town, drinking drinks, eating food and getting massages. Really embracing the local culture. I think I used today's energy on the bike ride yesterday, so it's probably better to see the temples tomorrow when we're feeling more refreshed.
We've booked a night bus for tomorrow night to Phnom Penh. Our time in Cambodia is going so fast, but hopefully we'll have time to travel down to Sihanoukville and spend some time on the island Kah Rong.
Angkor Whaaat?
14th May 2016
Yesterday the rainy season officially began in South East Asia with a quick but heavy monsoon. It cause chaos in the streets but there was a good atmosphere about.
Our third day in Siem Reap we finally made it to Angkor Wat! We booked a tuk tuk to pick us up from our hostel at 4:30am so we'd get there in time for sunrise. It's $18 to have a tuk tuk drive you around the temples for a whole day; we shared it with Nathalie and a Dutch boy so it came to about 3 pounds each.
The temples themselves are breaktaking. It wasn't worth going for sunrise as too many people had the same idea and it wasn't peaceful in the slightest. There would be >500 people crowded on one side of the lake to take photos, then one person would go to the other side in order for their friend to take a picture of them in front of the temple (and everyone else with a camera, too).
We were bullied into having a 6am breakfast by a Cambodian lady. The food was overpriced and bland, but it gave us some energy to start the day.
You start at Angkor Wat, then your tuk tuk driver takes you to Angkor Thom and you view a few more temples before he picks you up and takes you to the last few. The whole complex is a few miles wide and contains several markets and food stands. Each temple is huge, at least a 75x75m square, and would have housed a city. By about 10am we were sweating, and at midday it reached 40 degrees. There's also a lot of climbing involved for each temple; some staircases were more like ladders without any handrails.
Once I'm in Phnom Penh I'll upload some photos of the temples, but at the moment they are all on my memory card which is buried in my backpack ready for the night bus.
My favourite temple was by far Angkor Thom. It was a maze to get around and there were faces carved into its multiple towers. The temples were inhabited by the ancient Khmer civilisation and Angkor Thom was the largest and stood as the capital city. It's so symmetrical that Helen and I waited at different entrances for half an hour waiting to meet eachother.
For our last evening in Siem Reap we're going to go to thenight market to buy some cheap junk. We probably won't get much sleep tonight, and tomorrow will be packed with activities in Phnom Penh.