Cambodia - Siem Reap

13 - 17 June '08

After another turbulent and indirect flight, we arrived in Siem Reap, where the magnificent Angkor temples lay. We caught a tuk-tuk to the centrally located Psar Chaa area where we routinely sought for accommodation... 3 hostels later, we found one with availability and within budget. The area we stayed in boasted some modern bars and restaurants, yet retained a lot of its rural qualities. As we explored the surrounding neighbourhood, there was an abundance of tuk-tuk drivers offering their services for the temples. We took a liking to a smiley guy with good English... his name was Chhin and he would be our guide over the next couple of days. That evening our craving for indian food and beer was once again satisfied at the Kama Sutra restaurant.

The following day was a complete washout and we gladly postponed our trip to the temples. Instead we immersed ourselves in our books: 'The Killing Fields' and 'First They Killed My Father'. These books had been recommendations and we wanted to heighten our experiences of Cambodia.

With a fine new day, we ventured out to the Angkor temples. We won't bore you with the intricate details of the temples we saw, albeit that we visited a handful of the smaller and older temples on the first day; a mixture of Hindu and Buddhist ones. It was easy to lose yourself within these old stone-made buildings - the game of hide and seek was effortless. What's definitely worth a mention though is the swarms of 'cute' little children at each temple that would hurtle themselves towards you in a desperate bid to sell something. They would lay down some heart-wrenching lines like "If you don't buy... I will cry". They were very serious, and in fact one little boy set up camp with a box of tissues and forced the tears out - it was hard to resist sometimes and we walked away with some tacky bracelets and books. Chhin was very kind and accommodating towards us and as we shared a hot, khmer lunch with him, he explained how his parents had survived the Pol Pot Regime. His stories really hit home and made us realise once again how lucky we were. As the evening drew closer, we headed back feeling exhausted from the humidity and the climbing of the temples. But before we did, Chhin made one more stop at a village, and more specifically, at an orphanage that he supported where we met some talented young artists. That evening, we experienced a traditional 4-handed Khmer massage... 2 masseuses at one time... what a great tradition!

On our second day around the temples, we worked our way some more eerie temples (and some more cute kids). We ended with Angkor Wat itself (the temple of all temples), the walls of which were adorned with carvings from the Ramayana... although we had seen many temples by this point, this really was an impressive creation. That evening, as we continued to walk around and talk to locals (who took a real interest in the fact that we were Indian), it was inspiring to see how things had changed since the dark days of the Khmer Rouge. We ended our final night at the Dead Fish restaurant (previously a crocodile farm - it still actually retained a couple of them) where we saw some traditional Apsara dancing. We bumped into a girl we had met in Hanoi (we tended to see a lot of familiar travelling faces) and she shared her experiences of Phnom Penh.