Siem Reap - Days 167-169
- Andrew Wiech
- Dec 1, 2017
- 10 min read
Day 12
In my travel experience, there’s always one day that pushes the limits and causes a little more chaos than anticipated. I call it “Curveball Day.” Once you diagnose the day, it’s all about minimizing risks and double checking your plans. Today, unfortunately, was Curveball Day.
We started early with scheduled Uber rides to the airport. Since just 5 of us were leaving this morning, with Ilya, Lauren, Laur and Sally (self-titled the “Chiang Mai Leftovers”) departing in the afternoon, we split up with Aaron and I taking one Uber and Ben, Meg and Taylor in the other.
Aaron and I arrive before the rest and start our boarding process with checking bags and going through security, continually surprised to not see the rest of the group closely behind us. Not thinking much of it, we just keep our course and head through emigration and sit at the gate. Easy peasy. While waiting for the rest of the group, Aaron learns from his girlfriend back home that his car window was smashed in and his stuff riffled through. He didn’t have anything important missing but still not a fun thing to learn when you’re on the other side of the world.
After some time, we see Taylor walk up without his usual pep. Turns out Thai Air Asia made him check his bag and it came at a pretty hefty price, putting a damper on his morning and a tighter grip on his purse stings. I’m sorry, bud. Not much I can do there but passive aggressively make comments on social media tagging Thai Air Asia. :(
Last but not least, Meg walks up and tells us the tale of Ben. Turns out Ben realized he left his day pack outside the Airbnb with some valuable items and didn’t realize it until he had arrived to the airport. He ends up hopping back in the Uber to go back and grab it, hoping it’s still there and he makes it back in time. In the end, we all made it to the gate with plenty of time but it’s never fun when travel throws a few curveballs your way. Just like baseball, you gotta recognize it early and prepare for the curve to come to you.
Anyways, we make it to DMK for a short layover and Ben bust out his Chase Sapphire Preferred card to get us all access into the club lounge. Well, all of us but Aaron. We somehow lost him in-between the plane and the Inspection and Quarantine between flights. With priority club access, the day is starting to turn around. Aaron shows up eventually and we enjoy some final bites of free food before we head to the gate to board. Next stop, Cambodia.
Landing in Siem Reap, the scenery looks much different than what we were accustom to in Thailand. Definitely not as developed with mostly dirt roads and motor bikes and it also look mostly like wetlands. We make it through customs and thankfully, to avoid the hassle of negotiating on price, we prearranged a free pickup from our hostel, THE Siem Reap Hostel. (You have to say it like how NFL players say THE Ohio State University).
THE Siem Reap Hostel is probably my first real social hostel experience. It’s owned by an Aussie named Liam who just loved the area and decided to stick around as he mans the bar for his foreign guests. Unfortunately, we run into another curveball as we’re led to an 8 bed dorm (Bunk City!) when we booked out 10 bed dorm for all 9 of us. After some back and forth with the front desk, there isn’t much we can do and one of us technically has a bed in the other room. Meg falls on that grenade and volunteers for the other room, but being the only remaining married couple on the trip, she ends up sharing a twin bed with Ben. Thanks for taking one for the team.
Time to explore a bit of Siem Reap before the others arrive. A few of us need to pull out money from the ATM only to receive US Dollars (do you still get an international transaction fee to pull out USDs?). Oddly enough, Siem Reap operates on the dollar system so pretty much everything we run across cost $1. Also, it turns out today is Cambodia’s Independence Day. Unfortunately, Liam tells us most of the celebrations are in Phnom Penh so there ain’t much to see in Siem Reap.
Ok, time for some food. I don’t know what you’ve heard but according to our research, we haven’t heard the best things about Khmer food. Somehow, Thailand and Vietnam got most of the tasty dishes and didn’t leave much uniqueness for Cambodia. Because of this, it seems like there’s a ton of transplant restaurants in Siem Reap offering exotic fare like pizza, burgers, and Mexican food. As our first meal, we opt for pizza at Belmiro’s Pizza and Subs. After we eat, we collect our dirty laundry and head to a local l laundromat called Missing Sock. I gotta admit, it’s probably the coolest laundromat I’ve ever been to. Plus, with a flier from our hostel, we got a free beer while our laundry processed.
As our clothes washed, we talked gameplan for Cambodia. The original plan was to do Angkor Wat the following morning but we learned that it would be best to get tickets the night before and with half our group arriving after the ticket booth shuts down, that might not be the best plan. With this in mind, we head back to the hostel for some $0.50 Happy Hour beers and to play some Pass the Pigs. We gather a little bit of an audience as they watch this foreign game of pig dice and pig math. We even got a couple hop ons in the process: a guy named Ben from Munich and David from San Fransisco. After we did some damage at happy hour, we head into town for the Khmer Night Markets, which are pretty much the exact same as Thailand with arguably worse food and Cambodia beer merch instead of Thailand beer merch.
Along the journey, Aaron opts to get a fried snake from a street vendor and all of us but Taylor go in for a bite. It was as terrible as you’d assume, as a disgusted look grew on my face with each rib bone that I cracked with my teeth. Sorry for the visual. Striking out on food that catches our eye, some of us opt for a Doner Kabob from a local vendor. We eat that and then head to Viva Restaurant for some Mexican food. They’ve got a special tonight on Nachos (for independence day?) so Meg’s pumped. While we’re eating, we learn that the Chiang Mai leftovers have arrived and they need one of us to let them our hostel so we pay up and head back for one last beer at the hostel bar and to greet our friends.
Day 13
With no more sunrise plans at Angkor Wat today, we had the morning to sleep in. Everyone gets a slower start and we trickle into a place called Sister Srey cafe for breakfast/lunch. After everyone eats and does there own internet things, Aaron and Taylor head off to get Aaron an apple core tattoo. 30 minutes later, Aaron is successfully tatted up. Nearby, we stubble upon a cool cafe called Fat Panda. It’s a “pay-what-you-can” type shop organized by a non-profit call The Bamboo Project where all the profit go to benefit a local cause. Pretty cool concept, plus their fruit shakes were delicious.
With the rest of our afternoon free, a few of us waste the time poolside to avoid the hottest part of the day. Siem Reap is much warmer than Chiang Mai and Pai and we were sweating through clothes fast. With our Angkor Wat plans pushed back a day, we only needed to head to the ticket booth around 4:30pm to get our tickets for the following day. This late ticket purchase option included that evening so got to enjoy a sunset at Phnom Bakheng, only to find a crowd of people doing the same thing. A few of us enjoyed an Angkor beer on the ruins and took some photos of the ruins and once the sun has dropped, headed back to the hostel just in time for the tail end of Happy Hour. A couple more $0.50 beers later along with some Pass the Pigs with a hop-on or two, we split up for dinner. Laur, Meg, Ben and I take the risky route and choose a local restaurant recommended by Liam while the rest head into town for a slightly safer alternative. Our place doesn’t even show up on Google Maps and is one of the “point and pray” situations were you pick a picture and hope for the best. Thankfully, we all survived mystery meal and we were even given a complimentary cup of soup after our dinner as a thank you.
Given the early call time in the morning, it’s an early night to prepare for the sunrise.
Day 14:
Angkor Wat day has arrive and we need to be out the door by 4:30am to stay on schedule. Shoutout to Meg for taking the lead on this activity. A private van plus a tour guide came to $7 a person which seems pretty fare in my opinion. After a 15 minute ride (past the ticket booth because we had done that the night prior), we make it to the entrance of Angkor Wat. Whoops, Ben just realized he forgot the camera in the hostel so he takes the van back. Good thing we had a van because it’s much faster than the tuktuks.
Once the staff checks our tickets and removes the ropes, we bolt toward the reflection ponds to stake out the best locations. Traveling by phone flashlight, we stumble through preliminary ruins and make our way to the main attraction with plenty of time till the suns about the rise. Annoyingly, we’re greeted by a ton of vendors saying “Coffee, Coffee, $1, $1” over an over again until enough tourist arrive behind us to create a buffer zone. Worried we wouldn’t find Ben and keeping a close eye on my clock, ~30 minutes past so I decide to take a lap to look for him. Sure enough, my 15 minutes of estimated travel time was close enough and up walks a familiar face with unapologetically purple pants. We’re all relatively close together in the front for the main event. Taylor goes into “Sun mode” with a portable tripod and his specifically curated playlist as the rest of us enjoy our breakfast snacks and watch the outline of the ruins start to form out of the pitch black.
Once the sun has risen past the ruins, our guide finds us and we begin our tour. To be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed with our tour guide. Expected to get a bit more information than what we could read in a lonely planet book, but it could be that I was bit overtired from the early morning and not looking to listen to anyone. He leads us through part of the Angkor Wat and we head towards one of the side towers only to get slightly swindled by a “monk” offering us incense and an “authentic” prayer experience. Well, I guess they don’t call it SCAMbodia for nothing and at least we got a funny picture of Taylor touching his forehead directly on this sacred stone rather than just using his hand as directed. Adding to the SCAMbodia vibe, you’ll see children at every temple trying to sell you weird trinkets. I joked that their first english words are probably “One Dollar.”
Following Angkor Wat, we head over to Ta Prohm temple which just appears out of the jungle. This temple didn’t have too much notary till it was scouted as a location for Angelina Jolie and her role as Lara Craft in Tomb Raider. I guess I should probably watch that movie now. This temple was actually my favorite. It was crazy to see nature take over and literally have trees grow on top of these ruins with their roots reaching down deep into the soil. Plus, since it was pretty deep in the damp forest, much of the stone had a pretty cool green hue to it.
From Ta Prohm, we headed to Angkor Tom to visit Bayon and the temple of faces. Bayon was also very cool but lost some of it’s luster because of the sea of tourists that had now arrived. Given the struggle to see anything without interrupting someone’s photo, we decided to wrap up with Bayon and head to some nearby ruins, abandoning our tour guide but that might have been Ben’s plan from the beginning (Classic Ben). We set course for Baphuon, Phimeanakas and Tep Pranam, enjoying our unguided exploration. Eventually, all the water from the morning was catching up with us and Sally was showing signs of full on potty dance so we had to find some reprieve, stumbling upon a pretty sketchy looking “abandoned” bathroom on the way back to our tour guide. When ya gotta go, ya gotta go.
We reunite with our tour guide and he doesn’t seemed phase that our 20 minute break away turning into over an hour but we’re back in the bus about to head into town. Once at our hostel, we rest up with some naps poolside while some of the Chiang Mai leftovers head to Missing Sock for some laundry. Me and the remaining Onalaska boys, decide to meet them for some coffee as they teach me how to play Sheepshead. Once laundry is done, we make our way back to Hostel Happy Hour with a quick stop at Moringa bar for a local craft beer. Following Happy Hour, we agree upon dinner at Pot and Pan for some Khmer food. After dinner, some head back while others visit Pub Street. All in all, we have another early morning so I head to bed.
Day 15:
Last morning in Cambodia but here’s we’re we say “Adios” to Aaron and “See ya later” to Taylor. Sorry to have to wake you guys up at 6:30am to do this but we thought you might appreciate one last farewell and I’m sure you were already awake form listening to us pack. We hit the road in two separate tuktuks but on the journey, Laur realizes she doesn’t have her phone and is pretty sure it’s back in the hostel. Whoops! Laur heads back as the rest of us wait in a ridiculous Thai Air Asia line to simply check in/check some bags…classic Air Asia. By the time we’re through the line, Laur strolls up so we get her checked in through the priority line and make our way to the gate. We’ve got ~40 minutes till take off so Ben is able to treat us to another priority club experience to grab some free food and drink before we board our flight.
Next stop: Phuket but don’t worry, we’re only passing through our on was to Ko Phi Phi.