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There isn't a train connecting Phnom Penh with Siem Reap so we were doomed to another long, hot and stinky bus ride. It was dark and raining when we arrived at the bus station and the ground was covered with mud. Tuk Tuk drivers fought with each other for our attention, some going as far as offering a free ride, hoping for a chance to be our driver for our entire stay.
We decided to ride with a sweet little guy named Maury, who offered us a ride to the hotel for one dollar US.
Cambodia does have it's own currency- the Riel- but US money is accepted in all of the major cities. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge eliminated all money and introduced a barter economy. Most people used rice as currency. After the Vietnamese invaded in 1978, the Riel was re-established, but because there was no money for it to replace, the government ended up handing the money out to the general population to encourage people to use it. It felt a bit odd to be using US money in the middle of Asia but it did make it a lot easier to figure out the conversion
Me at Angkor Wat
photo taken by Ryanrate!
Again, we stayed at an amazing hotel. We decided after all of those crazy long bus rides we deserved to spoil ourselves a bit. After a night of gorging on the most delicious food known to man, some nice French wine and a swim in our beautiful pool, we went to sleep early so we'd have lots of energy for a full day of hiking around Angkor Wat.
Before this trip, neither Ryan or I knew anything about Angkor. I'm not sure why we don't learn anything about it in Canadian schools - Angkor Wat is the world's largest religious monument and Angkor as a whole is by far the most incredible thing I have ever seen.
Researchers think that Angkor was the largest preindustrial city in the world. Between 900 and 1200 CE, over 72 Angkor temples were built across three thousand square kilometers of space- which is roughly the size of Los Angeles today.
We hired Maury again to drive us for the day. He took us from one temple to the next- starting with some of the smaller, less visited temples. We finished the day with Angkor Wat as the sun was
setting. I'm not sure it's possible to fully describe what we saw. It was overwhelming- the level of detail in the carvings, the sheer size of the temples, a moat the size of a lake, the giant, thousand year old trees growing on top of the stones... it almost made me want to cry it was so beautiful. It's hard to imagine that 150 years ago, this whole city was undiscovered, covered with overgrown trees.
It seems impossible that our day could get better... but we still had to eat dinner. I never knew that eating could be so satisfying. I really think there must be drugs in Cambodian spices. I'm never going to want to eat again after this trip.
After dinner, we hooked up with a British couple we met on the bus ride to Siem Reap for some drinks. They were staying at a hotel that had a bar with live crocodiles just feet away from where you sat drinking. You could pay 50 cents US to feed them a plate of raw meat. It was the strangest and scariest bar I've ever seen.
We'd heard a few rumours about the incredibly bumpy twelve
hour bus trek between Cambodia and Thailand. There aren't any direct busses- you have to take one bus to the border and then walk half a kilometer in the 'no mans land' between the two countries, pass through customs and then get on another bus.
After our two long Cambodian bus rides, the thought of wasting a whole day in this kind of torture was too much to take. We decided it would be worth it to splurge again and fly. On to Thailand!
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Kate
Cambodia
I'm off to Cambodia for 8 weeks soon and after reading your blog am deffinately going to visit the temples. Am not much of a sightseeing boffin but they do look beautiful...I can just imagine them in the evening with the sun setting behind them.