29th – 31st October 

Another typical SE Asian Journey 

An early morning minibus took me from Kratie to Siem Reap. It was quite a long journey, but I had paid a couple of dollars more for the ‘premium’ bus and had a double seat to myself, so pretty comfy. I was wondering why this bus was also quite a bit quicker than the cheaper local bus – I quickly found out it was due to the ingenious idea of putting the whole minibus on a little ferry……. why not?! Kratie is based on one side of the Mekong and the main road to get onto the other side was quite far south, so instead we went across on the ferry, which took a while to depart as they couldn’t get the metal loading bridge up and off the edge of the bank 😂.

As routine now went on my life on the road in SE Asia, we stopped at our random road side food stop for breakfast (and the squat toilets of course). I had a spicy omelette and then found a bag of banana chips for the rest of the journey. It turns out those banana chips were the best purchase of the week! Man they were good. A crazy German couple, maybe in their late 50’s, called me back to the bus. When we ‘arrived’ I endured the next typical SE Asian journey trait of being dropped of several miles outside of the city centre (after being sold the ‘VIP’ bus journey that would supposedly take you from door to door). I managed to grab the German couple to ask if I could share a tuk tuk before they left. Unfortunately in my haste I managed to leave my new(ish) neck pillow is bought at Heathrow 😔. Still, it worked out a pretty cheap tuk tuk! They were quite eccentric and kept recommending this box bar thing to me. The temples sounded like the last thing on their agenda and they were only doing them because they couldn’t say they’d been to Siem Reap and not seen them! 😂

My first Onederz

We were dropped off pretty central and it was less than a 10 minute walk to my hostel. I’d opted to stay in the Onederz, a chain of premium hostels in Cambodia that are a couple of dollars more than the average price and with good facilities and reputation. This one had a roof top pool! 😎 I checked into an all girls door and immediately met an American girl called Amy, then soon after a Swiss girl called Desiree. We got chatting and discovered that we all wanted to do the temples the next day, so tried to make a plan – it took the rest of the day! Amy and went for a wander to check out a few prices and compare to what the hostel offered. We found one stand that was pretty reasonable. We went for an early dinner over the river at a rated restaurant on tripadvisor and both had one of Cambodia’s famous dishes, Amok. It’s sooooooooo yummy, it’s a creamy coconut curry (a bit like Thai), I had it with fish. It was particularly well done at this restaurant. We then headed back to the stand where we booked out tuk tuk for the next day to take us round the Angkor temples. It’s the done thing to start at sunrise, so with a 4.30am pick up we got an early night! (Well 2 of us did, Desiree went out dancing and suffered for it a bit the next day!).

Hardcore Temple Visiting

The hostel put on a early morning breakfast for those heading to the temples for sunrise, so at 4.20am we loaded up on toast (much to my annoyance all the pancakes and fancy breakfast stuff had already been demolished). We ended up setting off over 10 minutes late and had to rush to the ticket office to buy our tickets and get to the first temple. We’d also picked up a British guy who was on his own, so with an old rickety tuk tuk full, others were zooming past!! 😂

TIP: We did a pretty long hardcore day at the Angkor temples, starting at 4.30am and getting back at 6pm – if you’re really interested in seeing a lot an taking your time you can buy a 3 day or week pass, which you don’t have to use on consecutive days. It’s not cheap for the budget traveller, at $37 the price nearly doubled from last year for the day ticket!! So worth it though.

Also you can do the tours with or without a guide, or if there’s a group you can hire your own tuk tuk for the day to take your time (no guide included). Another option is to hire an electric or standard bicycle, which I was tempted to do, but it would be difficult to get round in just one day. Plus it’s hot!!! So maybe a better option if you’re sign the 3 day or 1 week pass.

The Angkor temples are beautiful, a real wonder of the world, some built a similar time to the pyramids and Westminster Abbey. This was the Pearl of Asia’s message to a competing world of their wealth and first class architecture. I’m not going to go into too much detail about each temple, as we did a lot and I’d be here for days, but you get a pretty spiritual feeling….. and also feel like you’re in tomb radar! I would definitely encourage everyone to go see them though, and to do the most famous temple, Angkor Wat, at sunrise.

TIP: Another tip I can give is to try and get the ‘famous shot’ of Angkor Wat and its reflection in the surrounding moat during the sunrise session, unlike me who didn’t realise that was what everyone gets up at 4am for and completely missed the opportunity 😂. This picture is courtesy of Desiree.

We stopped for a pretty crap lunch at one of the overpriced cafes near that temples, but it meant we could do both the small and grand circuit in one day, stopping for a beer before entering the final temple of sunset. (Pointless to try and film btw, everyone keeps pushing their heads in the way. All I wanted was a cool sunset time-lapse!)

The Siem Reaper

Feeling pretty proud at our day’s achievement and on a bit of a high, we got showered when we got back, went to a cheap restaurant for dinner, then headed over to the infamous pub street for drinks. Siem Reap itself is also pretty touristy and essentially a town built for the tours to the temples. There’s looooooooads of tour companies, restaurants and even more bars! The whole of pub street was decorated for Halloween and many European bar workers were out on the streets offering cheap drink offers. We didn’t stay out too long, it’d been a looooooong day, but we all managed a couple of beers and a boogie! Amy & I stayed out a bit longer to look round and saw some pretty weird and wonderful decorations, dress up and performances for Halloween 👻 

Halloween was pretty chilled for me. I’d booked a night bus for that evening and therefore had to check out and leave my bag in the luggage store for the day. It was a hot day again, so after a great cheap breakfast at …… and some admin, I went up to the rooftop to use the pool. This was my workout (I’d been neglecting me fitness a bit recently!), so I made the most of everyone else sunbathing and did lap after lap up & down the pool. I used the communal showers, then went back to the same restaurant I went to for breaky and had some dinner. There was a Halloween party going on back at the hostel and a few people were getting dressed up, it would have been a good night in pub street I think! I said my goodbyes, used my PassApp to grab my tuk tuk to the bus station and set off on my weird overnight journey down to the coast…….