Days 39-43: Siem Reap (Cambodia) and the Angkor temples

Mar 8-12

When I walked out of the small and beautiful Siem Reap airport, I was astonished by how aggressively I was leaped upon by taxi drivers. I waded through a following mob of about twenty of them as I walked out of the airport to catch a less expensive and more enjoyable tuk tuk. This was my first taste of the fairly stark contrast between Thailand and Cambodia. I was now farther south and more into the dry / hot season, so it was quite uncomfortably hot and humid, even though it was evening. On the tuk tuk ride into Siem Reap, there were pockets of poverty and dirtiness more extreme than what I had seen in Thailand, interspersed with huge luxury hotels catering to rich tourists here to see the famous Angkor temples. Another contrast I would notice later was that tourists pay twice the price that locals do, either because the English menu had doubled prices, or there were no displayed prices and the vendor just told you the tourist price. I often felt ripped off, and that the Siem Reap tourism industry got a lot of money out of me.

Upon a number of strong recommendations, I had come quite a long way to Siem Reap to see the Angkor Temples, but I have to say that I was a little underwhelmed. Yes, they are 1000 years old and quite impressive, but it was my other experiences which were more memorable.

The first such experience began within minutes of arriving at my hotel, after walking around in the hot and humid evening to two other full guest houses. There was a group of locals sitting in a circle outside my hotel, drinking, laughing, and talking loudly. After I ate dinner at a nearby restaurant, I bought four cans of beer from a corner store, and went back to my hotel. As I presented the beer, the circle of locals enthusiastically invited me to join them, and we sat around and talked and drank for a while. It turned out they were all tuk tuk drivers that worked around my hotel. The most outgoing and friendly one, who also spoke the best English, became my companion for the rest of my time in Siem Reap. He introduced himself as ¨Tear, like when you cry you make the tear.¨

The next morning I ate overpriced breakfast at my hotel and then rented an overpriced bicycle from them to explore the small city with hectic traffic. I stopped at a bicycle shop and had an interesting discussion with the shop manager about bicycles in Cambodia and bicycle importing / exporting around Southeast Asia and China.


When I returned to my hotel, I hung out a little more with Tear and the other tuk tuk drivers, and they invited me out for late-afternoon food and drinks with them in a quite poor part of town. Five of us enjoyed pitchers of light Angkor beer with a can of dark ABC beer poured into them, as well as finger food and laughs. There was a team of three or four busy young waitresses who constantly refilled our glasses with ice or brought more food, and the tuk tuk guys bossed them around somewhat. One of the four drivers was a taxi driver, and we later all piled into his car/taxi to head to karaoke, stopping to piss against a wall by the side of the road on our way there.


We arrived at a mid-range karaoke establishment with private rooms that you rented to do karaoke with the group you came with. The entrance was flanked by a line of girls dressed in formal dresses that you could pay for to hang out with you during karaoke or whatever else you wanted. All of the guys I was with were in their thirties and married, some with children, so we didn't partake much of the women, to the chagrin of the club staff; only two of my friends had women sit next to them while they sang, and I don't even know if we were charged for that or if they were just temptation. There was another woman in our room who assisted with the karaoke machine, making sure our beer glasses remained full. We had a lot of fun drinking and singing for a few hours, and I even sang a few songs, including one ¨American¨ song I had never heard but that my friends insisted I would know. They sang along with me.


After that experience, it was on to karaoke spot number two, this one much lower budget, seeming to be just a dirty room in someone´s house. It was a more laid-back and friendly atmosphere, a regular spot for these guys, and we had more fun singing, dancing, and laughing.


Early the next morning, I hired Tear for the day for $45 to drive me all around the area to explore the temples. We started by eating breakfast together at his friend´s market food stall, and then departed for the three-hour ride to Beng Mealea, a very ruined temple, devoured by surrounding jungle, and much less touristy due to its distance from the main temples. I had fun climbing over the fallen stones and exploring, but was a little annoyed when teenage and younger boys insisted on leading me around when I didn't want a guide and wanted to explore on my own. But it turned out that they pointed out things that I wouldn't have noticed, and they didn't ask for money when we parted ways.


Maybe more interesting as the temples were the villages and communities we drove through. Most houses had large holes dug in the ground outside them, and I later learned these were to catch water during the rainy season which would be used throughout the dry season. They were mostly dry now, and cows grazed in them, often amongst trash.


Gas stations in and around Siem Reap were small roadside stands with soda or liquor bottles filled with gas. You paid for a bottle and the person dumped it in your tank.


While riding along a bumpy, unpaved road in the countryside, we came across the scene of a very recent accident between two motorbikes. One motorbike was lying in the road with a shoe next to it, and I saw one person sitting in the shade of the roadside bushes with blood on his head. We stopped to look around but there was nothing we could do and a police officer was on the scene sorting things out. I half-jokingly reminded Tear to drive carefully, but I had confidence he was a good driver.


Kbal Spean was the second temple on our tour. Beautifully preserved and ornate, and of a reddish color, unlike the grey of other temples, Kbal Spean was Tear´s favorite temple and the only of the entire day that he joined me to explore. At the other temples, Tear napped in his tuk tuk or chatted with his tuk tuk buddies.


After these first two more distant temples, we drove to the heart of the Angkor action, Angkor Thom (which is actually a large group of temples) and the centerpiece of Angkor Wat, the pride of Cambodia and the only building to appear on a country´s flag.


For my second day exploring the temples, I rented a bicycle from the bicycle shop manager that I had talked with before. I rented the standard Asian bike: a cheap, simple, but sturdy and very functional one-speed. I spent most of the day toodling around Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, stopping here and there to explore. It got incredibly hot during the middle of the day, when all the temple restoration and staff people napped in shady places.


Filthy from a day of sweating and exploring, I returned to my hotel. Tear had recently returned from a tuk tuk job, and invited me to join him on a later job he had to take a French couple to the Western Baray for sunset. I had seen the Western Baray from the plane while coming into Siem Reap airport -- an enormous, rectangular reservoir, built by the French, that supplies Siem Reap. It´s a weekend destination for Siem Reap families, and there were a number of vendors and people enjoying the breeze and swimming in the water. Tear bought a bag of fried grasshoppers and two beers for us while the French couple sat elsewhere.


I had seen all I wanted of Siem Reap and Angkor, so I booked a bus for the next morning to Bangkok. Up until then, I had been enjoying easy, though expensive, air travel throughout Southeast Asia. I had heard that travel by bus was an experience, especially outside Thailand. Even though it might be unpleasant, it was an experience I wanted to have.

And I was not disappointed. My day began at 6:40am, waiting outside my hotel for the ¨bus¨. At about 7, a young guy on a motorbike rolled up and said he was taking me to the bus for Bangkok. Wary, I hoped on the back and was brought to a random street corner in the poor neighborhood where I had gotten food and beers with the tuk tuk drivers. But then a group of six tourist backpackers joined me, and it was clear I was in the right place. The bus arrived, looking a little rundown, not very clean inside and slightly sticky seats (from the humidity?). We proceded to drive around Siem Reap for the next hour, stopping to pick up groups of people, until every seat was filled, the entire back section of the bus was filled to the ceiling with backpacks, as well as the isle from the back of the bus almost to the front. As we were leaving Siem Reap, we pulled up to a repair shop and were notified that the bus had a flat; I enjoyed watching the young mechanic fix it, and wished I could explain to him that I used to be a bicycle mechanic.


The road from Siem Reap to Poipet at the Thai border was mostly dirt, incredibly dry and dusty. There was no air conditioning on the bus, so with the windows open, I had a layer of dirt all over my clothes and face by the end of the trip. There was tremendous construction going on while the road was still in use. Six hours, one more flat tire, and a lunch stop later, we arrived at Poipet where we got off the bus and spent almost two hours waiting in lines, getting passports stamped, and waiting for our Thai bus to Bangkok. The Thai bus was comfortable with good air conditioning, and the Thai roads were well paved as they were in the north.


The bus dropped us off in downtown Bangkok at about 8:30pm. Overall, the day's journey was fine, if a little uncomfortable at times. But I can see how this kind of travel would wear on you.