Day 4 - The Wonders Of Angkor Wat And Pub Street

On the morning of November 12th we had to get up super early to be able to get to the Bangkok airport by 7:00am for an 8:30 flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Since we were leaving so early in the morning it ended up taking about a half hour to get to the airport instead of the hour-and-a-half it took when we arrived in Bangkok.

We had investigated the idea of going to Cambodia over a land route, always my preferable way to travel, especially when in a place I've never been and want to see as much of it as possible. The bus ride from Bangkok to Siem Reap is supposed to take anywhere from 17 to 20 hours on some pretty rundown, rickety buses on roads that are supposedly unpaved in some areas. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it put the image of a scene from Romancing The Stone in my head. While that sounds like an exciting adventure, we didn't like the idea of losing a whole day on a bus that, unlike a train, has neither a sleeping compartment nor a bar car. Killing a whole day is fine if you are backpacking around for an entire summer, not so much if you only have three weeks to squeeze in as much of three countries as you can. And I don't even want to know what my back would have felt like at the end of that.

So we chose the hour-long flight instead.

We landed in Siem Reap at what had to be the smallest international airport I've ever seen. I think my high school was bigger than this place. I kind of assumed that with the size, and that we were the only flight that had just come in, we would be through passport control/customs in no time. I was sorely mistaken.

First we had to wait in the line to get our visas from the sour-faced military guys. Luckily we knew we needed to bring passport-size photos with us for our visas in Cambodia. There were several people there that didn't have them, but they were all running off somewhere pointed out to them by one of the security guys and coming back with a strip of pictures. They must have had one of those automatic photo booths.

After getting our visas, which cost us $20 each quoted and paid for in American money, we had to get at the end of the passport control lines, behind all the people that had been smart enough to get their visas in advance.

We finally got through passport control and it had been over an hour since we got off the plane, about twice as long as time we were actually in the air from Bangkok.

I was waiting with the bags for Lisa,who was in the restroom, and I realized I was standing next to the currency exchange. So I changed $200 to Cambodian Riel. I should have taken a clue from the fact that they asked us to pay for the visas in American cash and figured out that this was probably unnecessary. Maybe even inadvisable if I had remembered what I read on some blogs before we left and would find out myself eventually.

The hotel we were going to stay at in Siem Reap had arranged to have us picked up at the airport so there was someone waiting with a sign with Lisa's name on it when we emerged from the doors of the airport. We climbed into the car and off we went. Luckily we were only fifteen minutes from the hotel, Siem Reap not being a big place.

On the way our driver told us his name was Mr. Ya and that he was available for hire if we needed a driver while we were in town. He quoted us $25/day, $40 if going to one of the farther away temples. It was a nice car and it was air-conditioned, so we hired him. We told him we were going to leave by boat from Siem Reap for Phnom Penh in two days, so he took us by the place to buy the tickets on the way to the hotel. He also told us he could take us to the boat dock that day for another $10.

Well that was easy. On the way from the airport to the hotel we got our next two-and-a-half days of travel arrangements done.

Mr. Ya dropped us off we told him we would be ready to go in about 45 minutes. We checked into our room at a place called the Auberge Mont Royal.





What a fantastic place. And they had massage rooms next to the pool area as well!

Mr. Ya picked us up and off we went again, to see the temples of Angkor, the capital of Cambodia's ancient Khmer Empire. We spent our first day at Angkor Thom (Great Angkor, or Great City) and Angkor Wat, the mother of all temples.

We knew from what we read to be prepared for the onslaught of people trying to sell us stuff when we arrived at the sights. I don't think anything can really prepare you for it though. Dozens of people (mostly kids of ages ranging from single digits to teenagers) surround the car as soon as you pull up and are all over you with books, postcards, trinkets, cold drinks, t-shirts, scarves, etc.

And they don't let up. Say no to one book/postcard and they show you another. And they are so poor, but you can't buy everything you are offered (though we seemed to come close a couple of times). The standby line of "maybe when I come out" of the temple won't get you off either because they will be waiting for you when you do come out. Even if it's an hour later, they remember who you are and what you said.

We ended up with a book about Pol Pot and an Angkor Wat picture book. Because, you know, when you are traveling you really want to pick up as big and heavy of things as you can find.

The whole experience can be somewhat trying after a while (and would be even more so the next day) and very disheartening to see such poverty. But hopefully our buying a bunch of stuff we didn't need, or sometimes even want, helped out a little. And the payoff for us was to get to see some majestic sights.

My words won't even begin to do justice to Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. Pictures don't really do it either, but it at least gives you an idea.







And there were the cutest damn monkeys running around.




And some moments of kitsch (it is a tourist sight after all).



We were pretty worn out by the early evening, so we had Mr. Ya take us back to our hotel. We then walked to downtown Siem Reap to have dinner.

Getting used to the traffic in Siem Reap was a little difficult. There didn't seem to be any rules, or any real sidewalks. Tons of motorbikes, cars and remorque-motos (a moto with a trailer pulled behind, which most people referred to as a "tuk-tuk though they are different than the ones in Bangkok) kind of zooming around in big masses with no real semblance of order. That made the whole no sidewalk thing that much more unsettling. And I thought Bangkok's traffic was hard to deal with.

So at the end of a long day of seeing ancient temples and cities in the jungle we find ourselves in the middle of a lively downtown Siem Reap full of restaurants and bars and a ton of white people. If you didn't pay close attention to the architecture you might mistake it for the West Village.

There's actually a street that is commonly referred to as "Pub Street" and you can guess the reason why. There is an Irish pub called Molly Malone's and a bar called Angkor What?, among others. I am not kidding.

We had dinner in a great little restaurant called Khmer Kitchen in a funky little alley running alongside Pub Street.


We had a couple of entrees of Khmer curry, I had a couple of Angkor beers and Lisa had a Diet Coke. It cost something like eight bucks. So there was one way to tell we weren't in the West Village.

Well, that and the Geckos on the walls.



Next - Children tug at heartstrings to sell their trinkets, Land Mine Museum and a massage