Travel: Cambodia Siem Reap

INTRODUCTION



Cambodia, the place of ruins and ruins and lots of ruins. That's Siem Reap for you

So as can be seen, this is one of the most common photos to advertise the place, taken on my trusty Nexus. (I didn't bring any camera because lets face it, nowadays phone and skill can do pretty well at least for simpletons like me)

So this is what u will see, along with

This is the Tomb Raider Tree

So basically that's a little excerpt of the temple part in pictorial form.

Now into the review proper.

Tourist Attractions

Basically there are a few main attractions of Cambodia in the first place. The first are the temple ruins, then there is the floating village, then its the city and night life. This first section will talk purely on the things that you will get to see there in Cambodia. This is one main difference when u compar

e Cambodia to places like Myanmar and Laos. They are all Asian countries that are not as developed. However, Cambodia prides itself on the many temple ruins that has allowed the country to benefit financially as these temples are build from as long as 700 years ago, definitely not by the people of the current generation. People go there to see the huge temple ruins, and also the more intricate carvings on the wall as u can see below.

So as you can see, there is a carving of a pig, definitely in existence 700 yrs ago, as well as a demon eating a human on the right. So there are tons of these carvings and apparently there was even one of a dinosaur that we saw in one of the other temples. They are all there to tell a story and also give us an insight into the history of Cambodia, the things that happened then.

There are also a bit of history regarding the Khmer rouge regime where u can see bullet holes in the walls of the Angkor Wat itself. So this is a place for people who like history and the man made structures of the past alongside places like Egypt and its Pyramids, people who like to admire the intricacies of the carvings and how people 700 years ago could do this on hard sandstone.


Be prepared for plenty of walking and plenty of sun over there in Cambodia and in our 3 days tour of the temples and places we visited about 8 or more temples. So thats the number you should be expecting for your own trips.

Besides that, we also paid a visit to the floating village, which required us to take a boat out and see people who lived on boats, bigger boats, huge boats that looked more like houses and they even had a floating basketball court.

House Boat Boat House

Floating School

so you can see a house boat, and a boat house, which ever floats your boat. Note that these are different from stilted houses, these are really floating boats which means then when the tide rises, the houses can actually move along further with the tide. So this is something different for people to see and this is where you can actually literally swim to school, swimming will be your favorite sport in school.


Aside from these, there are other smaller attractions that u might be interested in such as a landmine museum where a landmine disarmer specialist has placed all his mines that he has disarmed and opened it to public to fund the education of children who have lost limbs in landmine accidents. This is something that the people and children of Cambodia face with daily unlike us in the developed world. Ironically, Singapore still has not signed the agreement stating that they will not produce landmines.

Its really small actually, just a circle around the hut that u see on the top, but the entrance is 2 USD so its really fine for viewing.


Besides that there are many other places and things to do but on our 5 day trip we didnt have the time. Apparently you can even try out firing weapons like AK-47 and even a rocket launcher if u have the money. Also there are many fish spas and massage centres that are pretty cheap all over the town so you can consider one if purely for the experience sake. There is also a quaint little movie theatre in the night noon market that shows some documentary about Cambodia history for 2 USD if i remember correctly. Its really like some pirated show off the net but it was fine for just the experience

Shopping

Shopping is pretty ok in Cambodia but to be honest I am not really a shopping person. But compared to places where you would go to shop such as Hong Kong, there is really not anything unique to shop about. There are a few tourist markets where u can get shirts of the Cambodian temples, or shirts that say "NO TUKTUK" or even ur favorite traditional Cambodian clothing. Two main markets that we visited are the Central and Old Market and also there are two more markets that you can find in the vicinity called the night and noon market. They might be one and the same but according to the map they are just merely very close together. Haggling is a must here, and you can almost half the prices on most of the things there.

Night Noon Market

The Map of the place

One of the two shopping centers in Siem Reap

So there are also two shopping centers, a far cry from any other developed cities, and these shopping centres are only about 3 or 4 stories high. There are a few places to eat inside but nothing that will really excite true shoppers.


Everything there is sold in USD and their own Cambodian currency are a sort of small change in that place. Exchange rate was a dollar usd to 4100 Cambodian currency.

Food

The food in Siem Reap City can be divided into two types. The first is the kind the high class people or westerners will prefer which is mainly concentrated into Pub street that any overfriendly Tuktuk driver will bring you to. Food there is not cheap but there are alot of places to hang around at night and some people who have hotels closer to the place might find it convenient to just go down for a drink. The other type is the budget street food, and this one needs a bit more looking for. Food to eat are the "Lok Lak" which is their stir fried beef and the "Amok" which is basically meat in some kinda rendang or curry type. It is usually fish meat. There is also their yellow noodle which is apparently quite famous in Cambodia but to me its kinda ordinary to our chow mien. Didn't take any pictures of the food though but ask around for the local cuisine and its definitely there.


They also have food such as pizza and if you are up to date in the travel guides you will know that away from pub street, there are places with cheaper pizza such as a place that I vaguely recall to be exciting pizza or something to that effect. Japanese food and korean food can even be found and there is a rotating table steamboat japanese sukiyaki place in the Lucky Supermarket that is fairly priced.


Try out their shakes for drinks as it is pretty cheap compared to what u get in Singapore at about 1.25 to 1.50 USD a cup.


If all else fails there is always the standard pizza hut like place as seen below.

Their Angkor beer is apparently pretty cheap over there compared to other brands also. Overall when we were there we had a fair share of pizza, jap food, western food and khmer food.

People

People there are generally very friendly as they are practically operating as a service industry in Siem reap due to the high flow of tourist. They are mostly able to speak english and there are many tuktuk drivers eager to bring u anywhere u want. Haggling at the markets are pretty fun and light spirited and most of the ladies there are pretty happy to give u a reasonable price without leaving any bad taste in your mouth. Also at every temple stop you will have the resident little girls who will come up to you to sell you stuff. The prices can easily be slashed but what is fun and impressive is their command of English and their fun little banter with you. I had to buy some gifts from this little girl as i promised her I would buy if she remembered my name which unfortunately she did.


Be smart and just take slight precaution of your stuff. The people there are mostly honest though and I doubt there is much thieving going around there.

Accommodation/Getting around

For our accommodation, we stayed at Lin Ratanak Angkor Hotel which was fantastically priced for our budget costing us USD 37 a day for a 4 bed room. We had two toilets and breakfast was entirely provided. Only Con was that it was a bit far from the city area but we could just take a tuktuk trip over which is less then 5 mins away anyway. They also provided free fetching from the airport so overall the accommodation there is pretty good. Either way the hotel should be reviewed seperately from this post but I would say the accommodation in general is pretty fabulous with plenty of hotels for all budgets and they have pretty good customer service.

The Room and the chaps who came along

Getting around like i said was via tuktuk for our rides to the city, they would attempt to charge us 1USD per person per trip but on the 2nd day we decided that we were only going for 2 USD per trip regardless of the number of people and they were already pretty happy to oblige. Hence its fair to say 2 USD per trip to anyone in the near vicinity is a reasonable price.


On the other hand for the tour of the temples itself, we hired a guide through my travelling mate's sister and he was Tokla, a very nice and friendly english speaking guy. Basically in Cambodia u can hire a tour guide who is fluent in any language u want, french, jap, korean, chinese and they will provide them for you. Our rate was 25USD per day regardless of number of people. Add to that a fixed transport which was a van for us at another 25USD per day. Note that we got the van because the Sedan was all out so we had a free upgrade :D. The van would have cost us 50 dollars per day.


A word of advice is that if you wanna tour the temples, you might as well get a official tour guide as compared to just asking a tuktuk driver to bring you around. I am not sure of the rates for the tuktuk driver but as the guides are able to follow you into the temple and give you a brief history, I feel that the trip has more meaning.

Cost

Overall, I spent about 650 SGD on the trip itself, inclusive of food and airfare and all that kind of thing. I would say i am a low budget spender but if we took a package the starting price would already be 696 SGD on hotel and airfare alone. Hence consider doing the arrangements yourself for a bit of saving and freedom as it is not really difficult at all to plan. Note that visiting temples requires a temple pass of which a 3 day pass costs 40 USD as you can see below.

3 Day Temple Pass

Your face is on it so its not transferable but consider it a contribution to helping to preserve the temple ruins of Cambodia and to stimulate their economy. 


Also another piece of advice is any place that the tour guide brings you to eat, is grossly over priced. The same yellow noodle that costs 1.25 USD in the street markets will be sold at 4.50 USD and it tastes exactly the same. Hence if you are like me, unwilling to spend so much, have a hefty breakfast and then you can just have a drink for lunch and gorge yourself silly during dinner.


SUMMARY


So in summary the review for my trip to Cambodia by the criteria over 5

TOURIST ATTRACTION   : 4 (More then enough places to see for 5 days)

SHOPPING                         : 3 (There are places to shop, but its no Hong Kong)
FOOD                                  : 4 (Nice food cheap food, all sorts of variety)
PEOPLE                             : 4 (Nice people, pretty safe place)
ACCOMODATION             : 4.5 (Plenty of choices for all budgets, easy to get around)
COST                                   : 4.5 (Cheap for a 5 day get away and it was well filled)


TOTAL                                  : 4 (A place you must visit once in your life)


Please give comments or reviews or other advice you want people to hear below :)