Day 2 - Siem Reap ~ Kids deserve a carefree childhood

In the early morning, we reach Angkor Wat, famous for sunrise viewing. When we reach Angkor Wat, sun had started rosing from behind 5 towers of Angkor Wat.

Took a few photos as we head for the ever popular lotus lake where many photographers will take photos of AW with AW's image reflected on the lotus lake.

Upon reaching the lotus lake on the left side of AW, a huge crowd had already gathered around the lake watching sunrise, Kester managed to chop a pretty good place for photo taking. As AW is currently under restoration, there was a huge green scaffold over the front part of AW, hence decide to make the photo sepia, pleasantly surprised that the effect turned out pretty good.

Next up, we started our temple visiting proper after breakfast with Angkor Thom. My god, another tourist flooded area. This is due to the fact that South gate has been the most extensively restored and most complete.

Angkor Thom is one of the largest Khmer cities founded by Jayavarman VII and remained as the capital until the 17th century. Accord to Rany, Jayavarman VII is the most influential and strongest ruler among all the rulers of Cambodia.

After passing the South gate, we next visited Elephant Terrance and Leper Kings Terrace, we can see Bas reliefs of hunting scenes with elepants and the 300m long Elephant terrance, was the foundation for royal reception pavilions.

We visited as well places like Preah Palily, Phimeanakas & Bapuon and next up, the famous Bayon.

This can be distinctively identified by the many faces statutes in these temple.

Rany managed to convince Kester to do a pose with one of the face. A kissing photo, which I politely rejected the offer as I done a similar pose in Taiwan.

I really like the faces in Bayon. Sun was pretty strong when we visited Bayon hence I had a hard time photographing Bayon, only managed to get a better few when we walked to back of Bayon where the sun was blocked by the tower.

That end our 2nd day exploration of Angkor Wat Park.

Afternoon, we had planned to visit Tonle Sap, a break from our temple exploration.

Tonle Sap is a good experience for me as this is the closet you can get to know the locals. It saddening to see such young souls are so money driven.

One such incident, will be this kid selling me mineral water for USD1, however, I dont have small change so turned to Kes to ask her pay first. My god, the kid sudden jet up the price to 2USD, we had no choice so we just give the kid 2USD.

2nd incident was when Kes wanted to take photo of our cute young boatman playing with the python, however the kid beside him suddenly snatch the python from the boy and showed 1 finger to my friend and said 1USD.

Guess the environment had cruelly taken their chance of leading a carefree, innocent childhood. For living, they were trained by their parents to earn money from tourists so as to feed the family.

With that, we ended our day exploring Siem Reap and find ourselves back in pub street for food. I had a chance to taste the beer of siem reap ~ angkor beer. Pretty light and refreshing I must say. Kester tried one sip and showed me a bitter face.

Day 1 ~ Siem Reap の Near Accident

After settling in our accomodation, friendly staff of Eight Rooms handed a map of Siem Reap's Pub street to us, giving us direction to reach Pub street for lunch while waiting for our room to be ready.

However, the map doesnt really matched the actual layout of Pub Street. We decided to walk down the streets, which seemed to be the correct way...

While Siem Reap is pretty safe for 2 ladies to roam around, the traffic is horrendous. Vehicles popped out from nowhere.

We're almost got hit by a motorcycle!

After much mapping, we finally found ourselves in Pub Street, by then we were hungry and thirsty. Hence we decide to have our lunch at Blue Pumpkin which was widely raved by customers who had visited Siem Reap.

We had sandwiches and yoghurt drinks for lunch. The sandwiches were pretty delicious and the drink really helped to whet up my appetite.

After lunch, our room is finally ready, I must say the room is really good considering the amount we are paying, the room is clean and comfortable. After unpacking, it time to meet our driver - Mr Tee, can't wait to start our temple visits.

We were being introduced to a Tuk Tuk Driver , who drove us to our first stop in Siem Reap ~ The Angkor National Museum.

Well, guessed we didnt do our homework well, when we reached there, we were told no bags inside the museum. We need to deposit all our baggages at the counter.

In turn, the staffs will pass you pullstring bags to contain your valuable stuffs. It was really inconvenient. We had to pour out all our items and packed into their bags.


After this slight glitch, we finally get over and done with the unpacking and packing , and start our visiting of the museum. I must say visiting the museum is a must before starting your temple visiting as it tells the history of when, how, what temples and stautes are built.

It was a fruitful, insightful visit, giving us a glimpse of what to expect when we go templing.

After the visit, we moved on to The Angkor Archaeological Park, to buy the pass needed to visit the temples. As passes bought after 5pm entitled the pass holders to visit the temples for sunset that very day, a long queue started forming at all the ticketing stations.

After buying the tickets, we were qucikly whisked off to Angkor Wat for sunset. Unfortunately, the driver brought us to Bakheng Hill for sunset instead, as time is running short, we decided to join the crowd and started our climb, the climb up was pretty long.

After climbing for about 15mins, we finally reached the hill top, what welcomed us was yet a flight of long and steeps steps.

I was not about to give up after climbing up the hill for 15mins. Hence, keeping my digital cam into my bag.

I started my climb, thinking Kester was right behind me. However, she didnt. She have a digital SLR in hand, and she was afraid of the "Bowling Ball Effect", as there was a huge crowd climbing it, one falls, those behind will follows.

Anyway, after a good 10min climbs, I finally reach the top, sun had already started to set, I quickly found myself a good spot, not blocked by the crowds and started to clicking my cam away.

The sunset was beautiful, really enjoyed watching the sun setting for the first time in Siem Reap. However, the crowd was really huge, it is impossible to get a clear shot of the sunset without people in the photos.

This is one of my favourite photos taken @ Siem Reap. I like the sillhoute against the silvery orange skyline.




After this we were back to Pub street for our dinner. We already know what we want to try for our first dinner, this is another widely raved by tourists ~ Khmer Kitchen. Yum Yum, Amok Fish was really good. We also ordered omelette and sweet and sour pork. Omelette was good, but it was slightly saltish, I not a pork lover hence I shall not comment on that.

Overall, Khmer Kitchen served really good Amok and the prices were considered cheap.

We roamed Pub street for awhile before returning to our accomodation to have a early night as we need to wake up really early the next day at 4plus for sunrise at Angkor Wat.

Siem Reap Roadtrip ~ Logistics

I had always chosen budget airline for my trip for the obvious reason. However, consider myself lucky this time, found a real good deal online from Silkair.

After much discussion and comparison of our schedules, me and Kes, my travel kah kee finally found a slot that we are all free and the flight is gonna to cost us a mere 246SGD to fly to Siem Reap.

Yipee.. I finally get to visit this city. I had always wanted to visit this famous UNESCO site, after seeing my friend travel photos to Siem Reap.

At the airport, we were greeted by the friendly staff from Eight Rooms, this budget stay was selected after much research and reading of comments on forum. It was considered a very affordable and worthwhile place in Siem Reap, costing us each 12 USD per night with A/C facilities, attached bathroom, cable as well as dvd player plus the fact 2 complimentary mineral bottles were being placed in our room each day. I must say this is a real steal.

Oh yes, the location was very good too.. It was just a 10min walk to the Pub Street, hence we could always walk to Pub Street for food or shopping.

For those who are interested in going Siem Reap, you might want to consider staying here. Weblink to Eight Rooms is as follows. http://www.eightrooms.com/home.htm. The rooms and surrounding photos posted in this link is what you gonna see when u reach Eightrooms.

Next was our itinerary in Siem Reap, after going through tons of website, forum recommendation, sending email to obtain quote from drivers and tour guides in Siem Reap, Kester finally found one driver with good reviews as well as affordable quote. He was known as Mr Tee.

For Mr Tee, I have mixed feeling about his services provided to us while we were in Siem Reap. First, he wasnt our driver for our trip there as his wife need to go phonm phen to get goods for her business and his father in law was sick so he have to accompany his wife to phonm phen.

Instead he gotten his friend - Mr Heng to help out, however, Mr Tee's car had some problem and need to restart a couple of time and he did not hand over the details to Mr Heng properly and we had to request for the agreed mineral water before Mr Heng prepared it.

Best of all, he had misread our email, and did not arrange a guide for us. But he redeem himself by finding us a very good guide at the last hour.

The tour guide, Rany, my impression of him for the 3 days in Siem reap was pretty good.
He a avid photographer himself, in the free time, he will explore AWP to take photos and shared his experience with his guests.

He is a down to earth, hard worker. These 3 days, I noticed he was always talking to the locals, especially the kids. He a friendly person I guess always able to chit chat with anyone he seen.

He would share cambodia life with us, the people, culture, his family, his friends' story with us. It always interesting to listen to him sharing his story with us.

He had made our trip to Siem Reap a memorable, enjoyable one.

I must say the whole trip thou tiring from all the climbing and walking, it can still be considered as a pretty relaxed trip, admiring the architecture, taking photos, listening to the story at a slow pace, but we managed completed what we wanted to cover on this trip.

On the last day, we are on our own engaging only a tuk tuk driver to drive us thru the countryside, we both realised that we missed Rany on our last day, hoping he was there to chit chat with us while enjoying the countryside ride.
=)