thoughts escaping my mind
I don’t believe it. I have spent the last two days, posting about 7 days of my trip in Siem Reap. I am almost done documenting this!
On my last day in Siem Reap – which was the 11th of February 2014 – I decided to go for a Cambodian massage at Lemongrass Garden and Spa. It is US$10 for 60 minutes. But the place only opens at 11am.
0530. It is an early departure out of Siem Reap. We have a lot of ground to cover. But my driver is late.
His name is Chamnam. He’s actually a certified Tour Guide, but I’ve only asked to be driven around. The addition of tour guiding fees costs nearly $100 and for a single traveller, I wasn’t willing to pay that much.
The car he’s using is very beat up, dusty, a little rattly. Sitting in the car, I think that on this trip, I’ve been really careless. I’ve made appointments with drivers (all men), do not know them, travelled to far and remote places with them, leaving at early hours, in the dark, so dark that sometimes I don’t even get to see their faces till much later, and really, no one knows who they are because I’ve not informed anyone whom I’m meeting.
But all these thoughts coming fast and furious as Chamnam drives fast and furiously further from Siem Reap are useless. The street lamps, already sparse in parts of Siem Reap disappear completely. It’s only the car headlamps on the road now.
Instead of taking the bus back to Siem Reap, I decided to join up in a taxi instead. This allowed me a couple more hours in Battambang.
The options for shared taxi are this: Share with other tourists or share with locals. If you share with tourists, it’s three people in the back seat, two in front. If you share with locals, they sit four in the back seat and two in front. I said, that I was okay sharing with locals, but I wanted the front seat on my own. This would set me back US$15.
I was guaranteed that the taxi driver would send me right to the doorstep of my hotel in Siem Reap, and, more importantly, not make unscheduled stops. This would make the journey shorter.
But before we get to the departure from Battambang, this is how I spent my morning.
Tiger Air flies from Singapore to Siem Reap three times a week. On Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Leaving on a Tuesday, I felt returning on Thursday would make the trip too tight. Returning on Sunday would mean too many days of temples in Siem Reap, and would be too short to add a side trip to Phnom Penh. So I gave myself a whole week and decided to go to Battambang instead over Phnom Penh, since PP is a larger city and easier to get to with more flight options.
So Day 5 saw me get on a bus to Battambang, the second largest city in Cambodia. Siem Reap sits between these two cities. Battambang sort of to its west or left of the main highway and PP to the east, or right of the main national highway 6.
I’m starting to feel burnt out by temples. Or is it that I’m starting to feel burnt out by my early morning starts?
The trip to Banteay Srei started very early because it’s quite a distance from Siem Reap and I want to catch the early morning light on the red sandstone.
How smart is it to fire your arranged means of transport when you intend to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat that requires a 0430 departure from the hotel? Not smart.
GPSDATA-20140205I started out early by tuk tuk to catch the early morning light at Ta Prohm where Lara Croft had some of her adventures. But I wouldn’t know for sure, because I’m not an Angelina Jolie fan. And Angelina Jolie liked to hang out at a restaurant called The Red Piano that runs on Street Number 8, parallel to Pub Street. So also another reason not to like that whole area, silly as it may sound. I still think it all adds up to a lack of authenticity in Siem Reap. But I digress.
Ta Prohm isn’t really the place to check out for a sunset, since it is surrounded by trees. But I wanted to get there early before the crowds came and and I couldn’t get shots of no one in them.
After I touched down at Siem Reap airport, I was picked up by a tuk tuk driver sent free by the hotel. What I didn’t realise is that this is an opportunity for the driver to get business as a driver for the rest of the trip. However, I had already secured a driver by e-mail for my travels.
I met this driver at the hotel. But he’d brought his “cousin”. (He would later refer to this cousin as his nephew in an e-mail.) And it was this cousin, not the him, whom I’d been communicating with all this while would bring me around. I did not like this, but I thought I’d go with the flow.
So I go by tuk tuk to get my 3 day pass at Angkor Wat and also, to enter Angkor Wat at 5pm. If you have tickets for the next day, you can get into the park after 5pm without it counting as a day. It was my plan to see Angkor Wat at the end of the day, and then at sunrise another day. So this post will encompass both days of Angkor Wat.
Everyone who goes to Siem Reap comes to visit Angkor Wat, once the capital of the Khmer.
I just realised that I’ve not posted about my Cambodian trip I did earlier this year in February from the 4th to 11th where I visited Siem Reap and Battambang, the second largest city in Cambodia. (Yes, I also have my incomplete travel posts on Scotland in 2012 and US road trip in 2011. It’s impossible to keep up.)
Warning: The posts will have a lot of photos. Travelling alone allows me to take photos without feeling like I’m making someone bored.
I’ve posted plenty of photos in my Cambodia 2014 gallery and I’ll start here with a general overview of Siem Reap town, some roadside sightings, the local markets and interesting foods I tasted along the way.
Continue reading “Cambodia: Siem Reap Sights, Local Markets and Food”