Siem Reap: Part I

From the moment we walked out the airport in Siem Reap (which means the flat defeat of Siam aka Thailand), I knew that I was going to absolutely love this country. The airport was clean and sleek, with touches of Asian art. The air and energy reminds me of India, but less crowded.

Our ride - motorcycle attached to a carriage

Dr Fish eating dead skin cells off my feet!

We were craving non-asian food so we found as air conditioned oasis called The Blue Pumpkin (Old Market location) had a delicious Mango Fruit Shake and some american food. We walked around the Old Market and Night Market. They both carry the same trinkets though the Old Market has meats and veggies and was  particularly foul smelling in those food sections. We found a small restaurant run by an Aussie and hung there to cool off. It's hot and humid here like Vietnam and Laos so we're constantly popping into cafes to have water or different sodas that are uncommon to us.

 For dinner we tried Khmer BBQ which is much like Korean BBQ but less tasty. We cooked our veggies (cabbage) and meats at a grill at our table with butter as the base. This came with a side of fried rice. Meat, veggies and rice. Pretty simple.

Since we are spending 4 days here, we devised a quick plan to see the sunrise and explore Angkor Wat  the next morning, take a lunch break, rest and head back to Angkor Thom in the evening.

Angkor Wat sunrise

Angkor Wat: 6 am sunrise. Stunning but smaller than the Taj Mahal. The temple is the middle while it is surround by huge moats, making it the largest Hindu temple complex in the world. We took the classic tourist pictures while the mosquitoes feasted on us. A tour guide approached us and we decided to go with it. He walked around with us for about an hour, told us about Angkor Wat and took some fun pictures. Some interesting facts - it means City Temple, was initially dedicated to Vishnu and then to Buddhism, and
faces west instead of east as most temples do which leads one to think it may be a funerary temple.

The temples are pretty worn down and has not been preserved that well. It seems that the aid of many foreign countries (Japan, Germany and France) are helping to restore parts of the complex though even if there were scaffolding up, there were no workers in sight on a weekday morning. Makes you wonder about how foreign aid is used and why the Cambodians aren't spending money to tidy up their cash cow of tourism.

For late breakfast, we hit up Common Ground, which is owned by People for Care & Learning (PCL). PCL seeks to serve the poor by providing opps for impoverished people to transform their lives through education, feeding centers, orphan/widow care and microfinance. Obviously I was excited to support a good cause, especially one that is close to my heart, in a very simple way. 

In the afternoon, after the most amazing lunch at Abacus, we went to Angkor Thom and walked around for a few hours. Apparently this was the location of many Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movie moments though not sure that they filmed on site.

On the way home, we were caught in a rain storm and asked the tuk tuk driver to let us be so were completely soaked during our ride home which was fun! Nothing like a random downpour, there's a calming beauty about it.

look for the faces