We got up relatively early for breakfast, and I was pleased to discover that Cambodian coffee is awesome. Rich, intense, and somewhere between Vietnamese and Thai coffee (which makes sense geographically). After breakfast we met our tour guide, who apologized and said that he had another tour group that he had to take, but said that his friend could take us on the tour. His friend seemed nice enough, so we just went with it, and left for the tour.
We explained what we wanted to do, and the tour guide suggested some other things to see, and after some negotiations and back and forth, we figured out a plan. The first step was to buy day passes for the temples, and so we stopped at a roadside ticket office that was very sophisticated. We handed over $20 US for each of us, and they made a photo pass on the spot that we could produce at each place to prove that we had paid. It was at about this time that I realized that we were running out of US dollars. None of the places so far had accepted credit cards, and our original plan was to mostly use the credit card and use cash for small expenses. As it stood we had enough dollars to pay for our tour and our ride from the airport, but that was about it.
So we spent the first half of the day going through Angkor Wat, the Banyan temple, and Baphuon temple. The grounds that contained all these temples was absolutely huge, and without a car it is impossible to do. The driver let us off and arranged for us to come back at certain times, so we were free to see and do what we pleased. I prefer that to a talkative tour guide who drags you all over the place, but the downside was that we sometimes didn’t understand everything we were looking at. Luckily our hotel wi-fi solved that problem when we got back.
Angkor Wat was impressive, but not quite what we had expected. I think Kuniko said it best – when your last trip was the Taj Mahal, the next place isn’t going to be quite so grand. But we did enjoy walking through, exploring the inside and seeing the carvings in the stone. Inside we met lots of noisy tourists who seemed to miss the signs asking for “quiet, please”. We spent almost 90 minutes at Angkor Wat, and then we hiked back to the parking area and took off for the next temple. Banyan temple was even more impressive – rundown spires with faces carved into them, and steps up and down forming kind of a maze. I could have spent all day looking through it. Also it was nice and cool in the dark underneath the stones, and it made for a nice break from the heat.
Our last stop was Baphuon, which looked more like a pyramid that a temple. The structure was surrounded by a moat (not quite as large as the one around Angkor Wat) that we crossed by an elevated stone pathway. It was beautiful coming in, and then we climbed the steep steps to the top and you could see nothing but jungle all around. There weren’t so many people here, so it was a good chance to take our time and enjoy poking around.
After walking from Baphuon we were getting a little burned out on temples. It was nearly 1 pm, and between the heat and the previous day’s travel, we were wearing down a bit. The driver wanted to take us to a touristy restaurant (cash only) so we talked him into taking us back to our hotel instead. I think he was worried about getting only half the payment for half the day, but we paid him in full and said goodbye. I think he was a little disappointed that he couldn’t take us “shopping” at one of the kickback shops that are just about everywhere. Sorry, man.
To conserve the US dollars that remained we ate lunch poolside at the hotel, and charged it to our room. The lunch was quite good – I had Cambodian BBQ steak with rice, egg and vegetables and Kuniko had coconut soup with cabbage, shrimp, squid and crab meat. Together with a couple of cold Angkor beers it was a nice wrap up to our sightseeing.
After a nap we decided to do some sightseeing around Siem Reap. The town is a popular place for tourists – especially young backpackers and adventure-seekers from America and Europe. Everything about the town was geared towards tourists. Although it was a tourist town, the shopkeepers and touts were pretty friendly. A smile and a ‘no thanks’ was all it took to get them to smile back and leave you alone. In India people were a lot more aggressive about making sales. Now and then we even bumped into our original driver from the airport. He was giving tours to other people and he stopped and smiled at us and said hello. Small world!
There was a lot to see around town. We walked all over the place, using the GPS in my iPhone for guidance. One thing we saw that was very popular was huge fish tanks full of flesh eating fish. People could sit and dangle their legs inside, and fish would nibble on the skin and “clean up” your feet for you. I didn’t try it (even though the signs said “No Pirahna!”) but there were a lot of people that did. We walked by a high school aged girl who was trying it, and she squealed and pulled her legs out once the fish went to work. An older guy was there with a camera taking pictures of it – but we weren’t sure if they knew each other or not.
Another interesting place was “Pub Street” – a street lined with restaurants and pubs that catered to tourists. Competition had brought the price of a mug of draft beer down to fifty cents, and so we sat and burned a couple of dollars on some beers to rest our legs a bit. Kuniko made friends with some cat that lived in the restaurant, walking between tables and legs hoping for scraps. We came back later that night to the same restaurant (called “Cambodian Soup Kitchen”) for dinner, and the Chinese guys next to us threw half a BBQ chicken on the ground to watch the cats fight over it. They managed to avoid the looks of horror from Kuniko.
Cambodian restaurants serve a lot of BBQ, and we were able to try it while we were there. We ordered frog as well as chicken for dinner, and both were excellent. The chicken was a little overcooked, but the frog was perfect (although a little bony). The sauce that came with the BBQ was really good – one was a spicy chili sauce (with sugar and garlic) and the other was a black pepper sauce that had some kind of strange flavor that we couldn’t quite identify. Delicious!
We finished off the night walking around town more taking in the sights – a riverside night market, a huge outdoor restaurant serving tour groups, ex-pat bars and disco parlors, all surrounded by jungle, poverty and cheerful local people. It was a strange vibe for a city, but we enjoyed our short stay there. Any longer would probably be too much.
