We arrive early afternoon in Siem Reap with no plans for the afternoon. Our hotel is beautiful, the LaNiche D’Angkor Boutique Hotel.  The rooms are set around a beautiful pool area with many palms and other tropical plants.

There is a very cool spot across the street for local food, Love You Cafe. They also have a small stage and acoustic guitar, if one wants to practice a bit. Our waitress, Miss Happy, is a young women studying the hospitality business at a local university. We enjoy talking to her about her hometown village, an island on the Mekong south of here, not far from the Mekong island we bicycled around this past weekend.

We move from lunch to the beautiful pool. The tropical setting and landscaping around the pool reminds me of my past home and pool on Arlington Street back in Sarasota, Florida.

We head to the central downtown area of Siem Reap for a walk around Pub Street, the Night Markets and to find some dinner. The Pub Street area is a little bit like a small New Orleans, many pubs and restaurants. There is also a lot of street food from tarantulas, crickets, and worms, to ice cream rolls and noodle dishes.

We sit at an outdoor table at Cafe Central. I am ordering the cheeseburger on pepper pot toast and Tracey orders a diovila pizza. (I think they mean fra diavlo, lol). We enjoy the food and even more the people watching from this great spot.

Siem Reap Day Two

Our first full day in Siem Reap is a restful one. No major plans today, so a chance to catch our breath. These are important days to recharge and catch up on some tasks. Critical time when “living around the world”. It would be impossible to be on “vacation” 24/7, 365 days a year.

We head down to the central market area and replenish some essential “beauty aids”. I buy a three dollar t-shirt to replace one I bought in Australia. It’s cheaper to buy new clothes than to wash them (not really, laundry is only $1.50 per kilogram, about one load). We are doing well on the clothing spend!

We sit down at a great spot off Pub Street, Fifty Five, eat some lunch and watch the world go by. The food is good here, a BLT on rye and a papaya salad.
We walk back to the hotel to enjoy the pool and a late afternoon massage. My body is enjoying this deep tissue Asian massages.  There is a lot of stretching and contortion, lol!

We head back down to Pub Street for dinner. Tonight we pick Khmer Kitchen and some seats on the sidewalk to watch Siem Reap life go by. Mick Jagger was spotted eating here years ago, so it can’t be that bad, right? I love the Amok and it is good here along with a cold Cambodia beer.

We visit the Angkor What? Bar for a night-cap, well, and another night-cap at Temple. Temple Bar has a guitar player and young female “singer”. They both struggle to sing in key but they are trying!

Day Three
We are picked up early by our guide while in this area, Mr. Lao, and our driver Mr. Chealy, who we call “Chili”.  Today we visit where it all started, well, at least the birthplace of the ancient Khmer Empire. Phnom Kulen or Mt. Kulen, a sandstone mountain formation covered by jungle. We did visit older “cities” in Cambodia such as Sambor Prei Kuk which is pre-angkor wat. Anyway, this is the place where the stone for building the Angkor temples originates. It is where King Jayavarma II proclaimed independence from Java in 804 AD.

It is also considered a very significant religious area of Cambodia to both Hindus and Buddhists.

After ascending the mountain we first see a stream, the Kbal Spean, a tributary that feeds the Siem River. The water is crystal clear and is considered holy. There are over 1,000 lingas (the phallic symbol of the Hindu god Shiva) built in the bottom of the stream over a 150m stretch….amazing! This is commonly known as the “River of a Thousand Lingas”. The water was actually diverted to build these. It is the incredible to think about how these were built so long ago, in the 11th century under the reign of King Suryavarman I and King Udayadityavarman II.

This stream is fed in part by an underwater spring of sparkling mineral water. We walk a couple hundred meters upstream to see this bubbling spring.

In these same mountains we stop at Preah Ang Thom, a 16th century monastery. A temple on the site has a giant reclining Buddha carved into an enormous boulder that is within the temple!

The area is populated with vendors and kids that “guard your shoes” for a small fee while you respectfully take them off to enter the sacred area and temples. The kids seem to play “rock, scissors, paper” to see who will get the privilege and the gratuity for watching the shoes. Kinda cute and only 1,000 riel (about 25 cents).

We walk through the village area, which includes the Terrace of Sdach Kum Long, which is a small temple ruin that was apparently covered by lava. It leads us to two sets of beautiful waterfalls.

One is very wide and four or five meters high, the second one is very high, about 15 to 20 meters. A bit cold for my Florida taste, but some are swimming!

Here we stop and enjoy a picnic lunch of grilled chicken, omelette, steamed rice and fresh fruit. The area has their version of cabanas for locals and tourists to use or large mats to sit on in the area.

We move on after lunch and drive to Banteay Srei Temple, “citadel of the women”, a 10th century temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. The temples are built largely of a hard red sandstone that can be carved like wood. The carvings are some of the most detailed you will ever see! The temple underwent a restoration in the 1930s which was amazing itself, given the time period.  This temple is a bit quieter as Mr. Lao our guide tells us it is not usually overrun with tourists.  However this makes for a very pleasant visit!

On the way back to Siem Reap we stop at a small roadside stand where they make palm sugar. We sampled some palm spirit. Wow! A bit like whiskey! Not bad…jet fuel for Tracey. We also sample the palm fruit which is the female fruit of the plant, sweet, tasty. From the same tree is the male part of the plant and we see how the palm juice is squeezed out of it…ouch!

We take the $2 tuk tuk back down to the Pub Street area. We opt for some Indian food for dinner at Dakshin’s. It is in an old building, but nice service and comfort. Four to eight dollars per main dish, but we will splurge tonight, lol.

I ask them to spice up my potato masala between medium and hot. Perfect! I have a bite of Tracey’s chicken tikka masala to cool my mouth a bit. Chilean wine is popular in SE Asia. They must have a good trade deal. The Merlot and Chardonnay are very good!

Day Four

Today is a fascinating day of visiting temples! We stop seven kilometers north of Siem Reap at Angkor Thom which was the last and longest running capital of the Khmer Empire. The name of this ancient capital city called “Angkor Thom” literally means “Big City”, appropriately named!

It is old, established in the 12th century by King Jayavarman, and is quite large, nine square kilometers. The south entrance, one of five to the ancient capital, is grand itself. It crosses a 100 meter wide moat with a bridge lined on both sides with 54 figures of asuras (demons) and devas (gods). There are also serpents or nagas.
The South Gate towers have enormous faces carved in them, similar to what we see at the large Bayon Temple that is in the center of the ancient city ruins. The temple itself at one time had 54 towers representing Cambodia’s original provinces, each with four enormous faces carved in them facing the four directions of east, west, north and south. Thirty-seven of the fifty-four towers remain standing. The detailed carving, the number of stone large faces staring about, and vastness of these structures invoke quite a feeling of what life was like then…”if walls could talk”. And these kinda do, with the detailed and voluminous carved murals in the walls that depict many many stories.
We move on a bit in Angkor Thom to the smaller but impressive Twin temples. The twin Hindu temples are Thommanon and Chau Say Tevoda. They are smaller but elegant also built in the 12th century
Thommanon is one of a pair of Hindu temples built during the reign of Suryavarman II (from 1113–1150) at Angkor, Cambodia. The small and elegant temples are dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu.
We go just pass these temples to cross a bridge over the Siem Reap River. The ancient Angkorian bridge runs along side with trees growing out it. They look to be of the banyan, fig or strangler dig, some with white roots and branches strangling the other trees. The growths are amazing, a bit Gaudi or Dali like.
From here we travel to Ta Prohm which for the most part has not been extensively restored. The structures are impressive and in some parts crumbling, but what has been allowed to occur over a few hundred years is the growth of trees. Over the structures, along the structures, and surrounding the structures. The enormous roots, some a couple of feet and width, as well as, the towering trees are a testament to the strength of these ancient buildings.

The tentacle-like tree roots seem to almost be strangling the surviving structures and stones. Work has occurred to make the site seemingly safe with reinforcements and renovation work is occurring with painstaking precision, searching, marking and reconstructing every stone and carving.  This sight is also called “Taprohm or Tomb Raider temple”, as this is where one of the Tomb Raider movies starring Angelina Jolie were filmed.

Amazingly it is only 2:30 pm and we must wait in the area for sunset at the Pre Rup. Pre Rup because of its positioning and impressive brick, laterite and sandstone construction make for beautiful colors at sunrise and sunset.

We sit across the street from this impressive temple drinking a cold Angkor beer sold by some locals in a nearby village. We spend a couple of hours here talking to them, their children and our guide Lao.

The temple has two outer walls in a square layout. At the top of the structures are five large towers. The base of the towers are reached as we climb steep stairs up the pyramid-shaped structure. A beautiful 13-year-old girl, Siya, had just finished her day at school and enjoyed her “football day” at school. After school she comes to sell goods to tourists. She gives the money she makes to her parents who then pay for her school. We enjoy chatting with her.

Mr. Lao gives her a lesson in “sales” and makes us all laugh.  We end up with a $1 flute which everyone around me wishes I did not buy when I start to play.

We are only a handful of people here, about an hour before sunset. At sunset, the structure is quite busy with hundreds of tourists awing in the scene provided by the sunset and monumental structures.

I mentioned to Lao that I wanted to try more local food. He takes us to a local market, where roadside, an elderly lady is cooking and serving bun cha, num banh chok noodles in coconut curry. They are served with a large plate of fresh greens, herbs and lotus stems. We enjoy this meal with Lao and our driver Mr. Chili. Four servings, three dollars. Yes! My turn to buy!

We head back to our Siem Reap home at the LaNiche Boutique for an early night in prep for tomorrow’s sunrise trip to arguably the largest religious structure in the world, Angkor Wat.

Day Five, Angkor Wat!

We wake at 4:20 am to prep for our 5:00 am sunrise trip to the worlds largest religious moment, Angkor Wat. Built in the 12th century by King Suryavarman II, it was originally dedicated to the  Hindu god Vishnu. It gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple toward the end of the 12th century.

We spend a fair amount of time here but the temple is massive.  We explore inside and the upper levels of the inner sanctuary. The steps to the upper terrace of Angkor Wat are very steep, but many make the pilgrimage.

The feeling of awe sets in as we experience this amazing blend of architecture and spirituality.  The stories told on the wall carvings are detailed and many. The views from inside out over the vast structures are as phenomenal as those outside.

In the afternoon, we make a trip to the floating village of Chong Kneas. It is an understatement to say that one needs a strong stomach to visit here, given the smells as the water is approached.  Unfortunately garbage is scattered around the area, apparently due to lack of services.  It cannot be a healthy spot to live. The community moves its location as waters change from wet season to dry season. The residents are primarily immigrants from Vietnam we are told. Everything floats on water in this living and fishing community. There are floating schools, floating shops, floating petrol stations, even floating karaoke bars. Many of the houses are floating fish farms with large pens of fish underneath.

 

 

For our last dinner in Siem Reap we go to Rohatt Cafe. The pork and ginger stir fry, sour soup and korko chicken are excellent. The scene here is beautiful on the second floor overlooking the Siem Reap river on a balmy 80 degree winter night.  This area of Cambodia has so much to offer from the city of Siem Reap to the ancient temples and cities.  It is worthy of spending much time to explore!

The area is rich with history and there is a lot to cover. Thanks to our wonderful guide Mr. Chheuy Lao for helping us learn so much and his great contributions to writing this blog! And a few more pics!