It’s a little sad that we leave Laos after 30 days. Indeed, we really enjoyed the country.
But the excitement of discovering a new country, and especially meeting up with Matt’s parents is stronger. We look forward to traveling the country together.
Laos – Cambodia border crossing
From the 4,000 islands we have a long way to go to get to Siem Reap. First we need to take a boat from Don Khone to the bus station in Ban Nakasang. From there we take a bus to the border with Cambodia. Before having to jump in a last bus from the border to Siem Reap.
The border is well known for its corruption. That is the main reason why we did our Cambodian Visas directly at the Cambodian embassy in Vientiane. That way we paid the regular price : 30$ instead of the $35 they ask at the border. They also ask for our vaccination booklet and can make us pay if we don’t have it on us, luckily they didn’t ask for anything.
However it is impossible to get away with the $2 per person that they ask when they put the stamp on your passport. These fees aren’t official but it’s part of the local “tradition”.
Some French travelers told us they stayed 3 hours at the border refusing to pay $2 because this is obviously corruption. In the end the policemen didn’t blink and the bus finally left without them. As a result they had to pay for another bus and still had to pay $2… We heard other stories where French tourists stayed 3 or 4 hours, had the policemen threaten to put them in jail, all that to pay $1 instead of $2… Pretty cheap and stupid if you ask me.
Because we already had our Visas we crossed the border in less than 20 minutes. On the other side the bus we pre-booked was already waiting for us, but we will leave only an hour later, waiting for all the other tourists to cross the border as well.
Now starts a 225 miles bus ride, in a minibus where we have barely any legroom, full of tourists, going to Siem Reap.
We stop for one and a half hour on the way in Stung Treng for lunch. Our first Cambodian village. We immediately notice that it is a lot dirtier here than in Laos.
We sit down in a local market, where we are the only tourists. Everybody else stopped at the bus company’s restaurant that seemed a little over priced for us. We ended up with a very good noodle soup at $1.25 a piece. First very cheap meal in Cambodia.
We arrive in Siem Reap at 7:30 pm, we are only 30 minutes late. Apparently the buses in Cambodia are in better shape than in Laos and it seems like there are less road constructions. The minibus drops us off at their agency in Siem Reap from where a tuk-tuk drives us to our guesthouse. We are immediately impressed by the tuk-tuk driver’s English level. His first sentence to Matt was ” how’s it going bro! “. He proposes to be our driver for they day we will go visit the Angkor temples. We immediately accept, he is really super nice and speaks great English.
We then go to a Belgian-Khmer brewpub that brews its own craft beer. After several months of drinking Coors Light type beer, it feels great to drink a nice craft IPA. We also grab a burger, with Matt’s parents arriving we know we will be eating nothing but local food, so we treat ourselves to a nice western meal !
Two lazy days waiting for the parents to arrive
The next day is spent at the pool, working on the blog as we wait for Matt’s parents to arrive.
We taste our first fish Amok at lunch. It’s fish baked in a banana leaf with a curry sauce. This is a traditional Cambodian dish.
In the evening we go walk around Pub Street, epicenter of the nightlife in Siem Reap. Here hundreds of bars filled with tourists and small alleys crowded with shops and restaurants.
We find a French restaurant for diner and order a cheese and charcuterie board. We promise this is the last non-Asian food we will order for a while !
We taste the Angkor beer for the first time, which is the local BeerLao, and wander around the old town before walking back to the guesthouse.
For us it feels like we are back in civilization after a month in Laos. Everything looks more modern, almost everybody speaks English etc… This seems to be the result of mass tourism.
Indeed, since the early 2000’s Siem Reap grew exponentially, thanks to the development of tourism in the region (Thailand, Vietnam and China) but also because of the Angkor temples. Huge hotels and many guesthouses are getting built everywhere to satisfy the millions of tourists each year. There are countless restaurants, massage salons and travel agencies. The traffic is pretty crazy and it gets really loud around Pub Street. A little bit too touristy for us but we couldn’t come to Cambodia without seeing Angkor.
Our second day in Siem Reap is once again spent resting at the pool. It is as hot as in Laos here so the swimming pool is more than welcome.
Early afternoon we change guesthouses to check in the one Chris and Isabelle (Matt’s parents) booked for the 4 of us. They arrived yesterday in Phnom Penh and are flying into Siem Reap this afternoon. They wait to be with us to experience Asian buses 😉 . We meet up late afternoon at the guesthouse, super happy to be the 4 together for the first time in over 8 months.
We celebrate their arrival with a beer and an excellent dinner.
Going to see the famous Angkor temples
If we came all the way to Siem Reap it is basically to see the famous Angkor temples. Capital of the Kmer Empire during more than 500 years, Angkor is one of the largest religious sites in the world. Today there are only ruins of temples built between the 9th and 15th century. Theses are the temples we are visiting today.
Lee, our tuk-tuk driver from a couple of days a go, is waiting in front of our guesthouse in order to drive us around the site during the day.
After purchasing our rather expensive entry tickets to the site, we start along the small loop. There are 287 temples in the Angkor region. It would take weeks to visit them all, and honestly, even if they have a strong historical significance, not all are worth the trip. The biggest and most beautiful temples are rather close from one another and you can decide to follow the Big Loop (15 miles) or the Small Loop (9 miles). We decided to only visit for one day and do the Small Loop.
The majestic Angkor Wat
We start with the most famous, biggest, most beautiful temple, the one printed on the Cambodian flag, but also the most visited one : the Angkor Wat temple.
Lee suggests that we start the visit at 9 am, because many people came early in the morning to watch the sunrise and they are now all having breakfast at their hotel. And also because the afternoon heat is dreadful since there is no shade at all while visiting this temple.
When we arrive there are many many many tourists. It is a little weird for us, we haven’t visited something this popular for a while now.
We enter through the main entrance by the West gate. The gate is accessible by a pedestrian bridge only.
Here we find the statue of Vishnu.
After the gate we find a huge field and a long dirt road that lead us to the famous towers that we can see from afar.
There are two pools where we can take the famous pictures with the reflection of the temple in the water. There is a little bit of wind when we get there, so it doesn’t look as pretty as what you can see on postcards sold all over the city.
We wander around the huge temple for an hour and a half, appreciating its beautiful architecture and its size.
The facades are beautifully sculpted, in perfect harmony, the 3,000 Apsaras (dancers) are represented with different haircuts all over the building. The sanctuary and the libraries are majestic.
Despite the huge number of tourists we manage to find places where we are alone to admire this spectacular place.
We go find Lee after the visit of Angkor Wat, to drive us to Angkor Thom.
Angkor Thom is an old fortified village with several temples. At the end of a long avenue we start to see the South gate, a beautiful arch topped by a Buddha with 4 faces.
On each side of the bridge, 54 statues of giants. Lee drops us off to walk on the bridge on foot so we can see these impressive statues from up close.
On the other side of the gate we enter the royal city. You can enter the city only through one of the 5 huge gates. During medieval times, the former capital of the country, was home to 100,000 people. Now you can only find trees, cows, monkeys and tourists of course.
Bayon temple
The first temple we visit here is the Bayon. It is a giant forest of faces looking in all directions. Originally there were 54 towers (only 37 remain today), representing the 54 provinces of the Khmer empire. Each tower is topped by 4 faces of Buddha, representing its 4 virtues : loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity.
We really enjoyed this temple and were happy to get lost among the different levels and between all the towers.
Baphuon temple
Not from from the Bayon, we visited the Baphuon temple. This is one of the biggest religious monument in ancient Cambodia.
At the time it was unbelievable to built such a steep pyramid. It was so hard to do that at some point it collapsed.
Between 1995 and 2012 a huge restoration program was put in place to build the temple back up. A huge undertaking that was never 100% completed but gives us a very good idea of what the temple used to look like.
Quick lunch break in a Khmer restaurant before visiting the last temple of the day : Ta Prohm.
Ta Prohm temple
We thought Angkor Wat would be the busiest temple but that was before getting to Ta Prohm.
Built as a monastery and Buddhist university at the end of the 12th century, this one was never restored and has been left the way it was rediscovered at the end of the 20th century.
Why is this one so popular? Basically because scenes from the movie Lara Croft : Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie were shot here in this incredible decor.
This temple is very different than the ones we visited in the morning. This one has a magical and mystical aspect to it. Especially because of all the trees and roots that are intertwined with the construction. Sometimes we have the feeling that we are standing in front of a huge alien monster.
We soon realize that we are visiting the temple in the opposite direction than everybody else. So we sometimes have to stop and wait a few minutes for huge groups to walk by.
This site is really spectacular and looks pretty amazing despite the fact that it is in total shambles.
We ride back to our guesthouse in the afternoon, and the temperature is around 110 degrees. The visit of Angkor was a beautiful surprise. We really thought we would be visiting temples with hundreds of thousands of tourist and we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to appreciate it, but it wasn’t the case at all. We can officially say it now, Angkor is a must-see in Cambodia for us (even if you still have to be careful not to get hit by a selfie stick or the flag of a Chinese tour guide!).
Dinner and show : Apsara dances
This evening we go see a traditional Apsara diner-show showcasing 5 local dances.
The dances are as slow as the ones in Thailand, but the music and the costumes are very different at times.
Visit of the largest lake in Southeast Asia, the Tonlé Sap
For our last day in Siem Reap, Lee is our tuk-tuk driver again and he brings us to visit a floating village on the Tonlé Sap lake.
Tonlé Sap is the biggest lake in Southeast Asia and is very important for Cambodian agriculture. The water level is low between February and June during the dry season, and high from August to November during the rainy season. The lake’s surface area is multiplied by 4 and its depth multiplied by 10 during the rainy season, thanks to the principal of communicating vessels : as the level of the Mekong rises during the rainy season, it becomes higher than the lake, so the current changes direction and flows towards Tonlé Sap. During the dry season the Mekong is lower, so the current changes direction and the water from the lake flows back into the Mekong.
We have a private boat and our own guide : Wet, who speaks English very well.
We gives us a lot of information about the village and how the people live. All the floating houses are moved from the lake to one of the canals just before the rainy season. Indeed during the rainy season there can be heavy storms and it is too dangerous to stay in the middle of the lake.
Everything here is done by boat: going to school, grocery shopping and fishing of course. The color of the water is brown during the dry season because the water is very shallow and close to the earth, it becomes more blue as the water level rises during the rainy season. We navigate around the town where we can see in what very poor conditions the people live in.
Even if it is pretty interesting to see this village and see how the people live, we had the impression of being taken for a walking wallet. We won’t spend time on the details but with the mass tourism from Siem Reap, the agencies and the people try to make you pay for everything and something as innocent as visiting the local school turns into an unhealthy tourist trap.
The boat ride back was the perfect occasion for Matt to learn how to drive like the locals.
Water Yiacinth hand-craft
On our way back to Siem Reap, Lee stops at a women’s house who works with water Yiacinth. This is an Asian plant that grows in lakes and can be a problem if it spreads because it kills the lake’s biodiversity. Some women now use this plant that they dry and make hammocks, bags or carpets out of it. This benefits the women who now can generate an income and helps protect the lake as well.
We arrive in this women’s house. She tells us that she has been working with water Yiacinth for 10 years now, and she even won a few prizes rewarding her work at a national and international level. She is very proud to show us her prizes, and we feel blessed to be able to see how she works. Lee translates everything for us as she explains her work and her background. She is working when we arrive and we are happy to observe how skilled she is. She is working on an order for several hotels in Cambodia and in Japan. She taught her entire family how to work the water Yiacinth so now everybody can help !
Visiting a lotus farm
We had seen lotus farms on the way, and Lee nicely proposed to drop us off to visit one.
Before stopping for lunch in the restaurant of a friend of his, right across the street from his house. Lee actually takes the opportunity to take his daughters to school while we are having lunch.
We get back to Siem Reap early afternoon.
Angkor artisans
After a quick stop by the guesthouse we go to visit the Angkor Artisan school. This school helps children from poor families and teaches them the old methods of wood carving and rock sculpting, as well as silk painting or lacquering, and plenty of other techniques. It is possible to visit the school for free and learn more about these traditional techniques. We absolutely loved this visit. It is really impressive to see how they work. They are so skilled.
We had the opportunity to try ourselves and boy we are far from being able to do anything!
And because it is still so hot when we leave the school, we decide to go have a cold beer. Luckily just outside the school there is a craft brewery. Matt and Chris have a few samples. Boy do these taste better than what we usually drink !
We spend our last evening in Siem Reap having dinner in one of the local street stands located by the canal.
Next stop in Cambodia : the city of Kratie.