September 2014, and Cambodia was the destination! We crammed two adventurers into this trip. The first was a week volunteering at Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS), a guide to which can be found here, and a second week at Siem Reap and the world famous Angkor Wat temples which this guide is all about.

I have separated the review as most people will be interested in one or the other, but please feel free to read both! 🙂

Siem Reap is easy to get to by air (from Australia anyhow). As with most things government in Cambodia the airport is very official and you get to fill in the same information on at least 4 different forms to get your visa on arrival ($20USD), and traipse from queue to queue while the very official officials (you can tell by the number of Boy Scout badges on their uniforms) pour through your answers looking for any little mistakes. Don’t forget to bring a passport photo!

Once that is over with, you get a chance to buy a local SIM card for your phone/tablet before leaving the airport. There are four or five carriers to choose from but online research led me to CellCard due to their better coverage outside the cities, they guy was very helpful, inserting the Simm, testing it, and ensuring that the data was what you paid for. It all worked as well as you can expect over the next two weeks on the local 3G network (no 4G in Cambodia at the time of writing).

We stayed at a hotel that was totally excessive in its splendor, could not fault the place or the staff. In fact the only complaint would be the snobbish 5star guests who seemed intent on treating the local staff badly – bloody foreigners!

Siem Reap itself is very easy to get around. It is the usual hustle and bustle of any South East Asia city, with tuk-tuks and scooters weaving in and out of dense traffic. We found that US$2 could get you anywhere in the city by Tuk-Tuk. Someplace between $15-$20  will get you your own tuk-tuk and driver for the day who can escort you around and show you the sights. Every driver will tell you that he happens to be off work tomorrow if you want to hire a guide, so don’t be in a rush to accept the first offer that comes along. As with anywhere some drivers are more helpful than others, and some have better English which can be great to get local hints and insights into real Cambodian life.

The very aptly named Pub Street is pretty much in the centre of the city and is the evening gathering place a lot of westerners. We were there in what was still the low season, so crowds were smaller and prices more keen to draw the crowds. $0.50 beers and most western aimed meals were $5, but much better food bargains are available if you get away from the tourist streets. The crowd was a mix of expats, middle aged and retiree tourists there to primarily to visit the famous Angkor Wat, plus the standard backpacker crowd. As said we were in low season so I expect that the backpackers would win the volume in higher season. Siem Reap is an obligatory stop on the standard 3 month backpacker trail from Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia-Thailand.  We didn’t see any trouble there despite the cheap drinks and late night bars, the evening crowd was always pleasant and even the street begging had unseen lines along the road which they did not cross. Supporting street begging does not solve any problems so don’t do it – donate to local NGO charities if you wish to help the children.

The area around Pub Street was also filled with markets which go from dawn until late night. The Night Market beside the river is certainly worth a walk, if only for the lights and view of the river at night. The markets are the same all day, and the stalls repeat the wears regularly. I found the stall holders much less pushy than their Thai counterparts, so the hard sell hassle is at a much more tolerable level. Local timber carvings (which you probably won’t get back into Australia), cheap decorative jewellery, beautiful paintings of temples and elephants, fabrics, and millions of cheap T-shirts and tourist trinkets, seem to blend seamlessly with the local stalls selling rice, spices, exotic meat and seafood. If you are hunting for gifts then this is a must do for you.

We took the opportunity to do some tourist activities – the first was a Quad Bike trip out of the city to explore the countryside. It is an expensive trip by local standards ($55 for 2hours) but it does get you out of the city and into the surrounding countryside. I did not tire of the amazing views of the rice fields and tall palm trees. The local children were amazing too as they would run down the lane of their homes to wave at the crazy foreigners on the quad bikes. It seemed a matter of pride that they get to wave to us. It leaves you with mixed emotions seeing how happy they are, while you recognise the near poverty of their homes and living conditions. You probably just spent a two months income on your two hour bike ride. Food for thought to take away.

The second adventure trip was zip lining (or flying fox depending on your nationality) in the forests. The Flight Of The Gibbon is a franchise organisation that does similar tours around various South East Asia countries. Not for the faint hearted and even those who are not afraid of heights will get a buzz out of the tour. As the trip takes place in the Angkor Wat national park, you can be clever and combine your 3 day pass.

The next trip took us about an hour by tuk-tuk out of the city. We went to one of the still active Land Mine museums. The people here still work clearing land mines dropped it seems by every vying waring nation (China, Russia, USA, Britain, Australia, Vietnam, Thailand and of course the Khmer Rouge). After its independence from France in the 1950’s Cambodia seems to have gone from war to war from the 1960’s to the 1990’s, and each interested party dropped more and more land mines. Today there may still be over 200,000 still active and waiting for their victims. Nobody really knows the number as most countries never kept track of just how many they dropped or where. This little organisation is doing amazing work to remove the remnants of the wars that everyone else is trying hard to forget.

Siem Reap is a nice city, and a gateway to so much more in Cambodia. Put it on your to-do list!

PART 2 – Angkor Wat

Last and not least is Angkor Wat.  I really should devote a separate page to the temple city, after all this is the main reason why so many people visit Siem Reap (although we were there for Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary). It is World Heritage listed and up there with Machu Picchu in Peru as a must see site. The whole area is a national park and you pay for a 1 or 3 day pass. It is a photographers dream, and you could easily spend three days looking at each individual temple in great detail and searching for the perfect shot. We went for the 1 day version which is just enough time to see each main temple with your hired Tuk-Tuk to drive you between each. It is a very hot and draining day and I imagine that in high season the crowds would be intense. As it was we still had to fight the crowd in low season! Our hint was to work your way towards Angkor Wat itself, doing the outer temples first and that worked just fine. Some do Angkow Wat for Sunrise or Sunset but you will need to battle literally thousands of people doing the same and I am not convinced it is worth it! A select few photos are below and if you want video then hire Lara Croft Tomb Raider, and Angelina Jolie will show you some of the temples!