Siem Reap – a nice town by Angkor wat

(Siem Reap, Cambodia, 15-20th of February)

Siem Reap is not really a small town as it has 1 million citizens, but it feels like a tiny place. It is filled with low buildings and a lot of tiny alleys and nice restaurants. We had booked 3 nights to start with in a really nice hotel called the Sleeping Angkor. Our room was huge and the hotel had a pool and was really nicely decorated.

You come to Siem Reap mostly because it is close to Angkor Wat, Cambodia’s main attraction. We decided to buy a one day ticket to the Angkor Wat area. Angor Wat and the other temples are situated 10 kms from Siem Reap and the ticket office is outside the city on the way there. It is in a huge building and it is very organized. We got our pictures taken and got our tickets, 37 USD per person.

We were recommended to go to a certain place, Pre Rup, for sunset but as soon as we got there we found out it was not a place for us to visit. It was a smaller temple crowded with people all over it and the only sunset view you got from there was over the tree tops, looking away from the temple. We told our driver to leave and by chance we saw a smaller temple along the way back and told the driver to stop there. The area was almost abandoned but some people were preparing for some kind of event and we were told they were going to have a party there the same evening for members of the goverment. We got some great shots and then continued home.

The day after we started our trip to Angor Wat at 8.00 AM. Our personal guide and our nice tuktuk driver Rob showed up and we headed on towards the ruins.

We started with Angkor Wat and we got some real nice pictures, even though the place was crowded with people.

It is a impressing place and you can really imagine how it must have looked like when it was newly built. The area was abandoned for 400 years and a lot of damage has been made to the buildings during this time.

The next stop was Angkor Thom and especially the Bayon temple which was really nice with a lot of carved faces all over the place.

The Angkor temple areas were only used for worshipping and the people lived in wooden houses outside these areas.

Then it was time to visit Ta Phrom, where the film Tomb Raider was shot.

Our guide was unfortunately not that good at his job…. He was rushing through the area and only told us short stories of the sights. It was around 35 degrees hot and we were sweaty all over as we walked so fast. We told him a couple of times to slow down but he still lost us when we stopped to take pictures.

The temple area is huge. We did the small circuit and you could spend at least one more day just to see all the buildings. But Johans saying rules…”Same Same…but different” and “Been there, done that”. Meaning, well most of them look the same so why see them all…We were satisfied when our day finished, for us one day was enough.

We were supposed to leave Siem Reap to fly to Sihankouville by the coast to spend a day on the beach. But we did not find any available nice hotels online and we decided to stay in Siem Reap another two nights and then fly to Phnom Penh and then directly on to India. Unfortunately the hotel we were staying at in Siem Reap was fully booked  so we had to find another place to stay. The new hotel was also very nice and we got a room with a view over the swimming pool. We decided to do absolutely nothing on the extra day we got as we did not travel to Sihankouville and we relaxed by the pool, sorted pictures for the blog and tried to plan a bit ahead.