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Published: January 1st 2012
by Polona Well, I was told it was my turn to write about Siem Reap, so here it goes.
As we still haven't changed and are still cheap, I had that in my mind when buying tickets for our bus to Siem Reap. V.I.P bus? Pha, scratch that, we will go for the cheap one. But when we arrived to the bus station there was only the V.I.P. bus there. Ah, well, we had designated seats, which we took and were holding our breath, just waiting to be thrown off the bus. But nothing happened and we rode in style to Siem Reap.
We stayed in a remote hostel the first night, but were so unhappy with the whole situation, that we took Leo's advice and went to stay at the Garden Village, which became our second home for the following 10 days, yup, I said 10. We were still charging our batteries and the hostel had this amazing terrace, nice food and football on the TV 24/7 (I am sure Jan thought he died and went to heaven 😊).
I mentioned the food, which was really nice, but if anywhere this hostel staff took the
Cambodian speed for service to another level. They had the terrace connected to the kitchen via walkie – talkies, and they took all the orders down, so you would've thought that it should of worked without any problem. But, for some reason, you would usually wait for your food for ages (granted it became a habit for everyone to check up on their order with the staff every passing half hour), there would be food coming up that no one ordered, and you were lucky if you got your order right. But the food was worth the wait and as we almost became a part of the terrace inventory (together with so many other backpackers) we found it all fun and amusing.
It was interesting, how this whole trip I was so excited to come to Angkor Wat, as Jan has been talking about it for 6 years, and once we got there, I was just so tired that not even the fact that I finally got to my destination could get me off my butt.
So, what did we do while in Siem Reap? The second day after our arrival we went for a short boat tour
to the floating village. I thought it would be just like any other, but it was actually really interesting to see. We hired a tuk – tuk to take us on the extremely bumpy road towards the lake. There were several people there already and we assumed we would all go with one boat, but we were wrong. One boat per group – which meant that we had a huge boat all to ourselves. We were lucky as our boat driver spoke English so he was able to explain a lot about what we were seeing.
The village is situated in the middle of a big lake and due to the fact that the water level depends on the season, they are forced to move with the water. The people living on small and colourful boats are mainly fishermen, which is also their main livelihood. We were told that the people are simply too poor to be able to afford a house so they are forced to live on the lake. You can find everything on those small boats: “supermarket”, restaurants, bars...even temples, churches and schools. The boat driver told us that during the rainy season the fishermen would
travel far from the village and fish for many days, before returning back home and selling their catch at the floating market. Going out on the lake during the rainy season is quite dangerous though and results in many deaths, which leaves many children parent-less. The number of orphaned children keeps rising so they were forced to open a floating orphanage, which offers these children shelter, food and education. The orphanage relies on contributions by different organizations as well as random visitors like us. The boat driver asked us if we wanted to visit the children and we said yes. He asked us to buy something for the children first (either food, note books...) so we stopped at the “supermarket” first. We decided to buy food for the kids, so we bought a huge package of instant noodles, that was supposed to feed 50 children. That's all the money we had with us, so we weren't able to buy more.
We went back to the boat and we stopped at the orphanage, where they were more than happy to accept our “donation” and they invited us to stay around and play with the children. We were immediately surrounded by
the smallest of the kids (the older children were attending classes) and Jan and I played with them, we took some pictures, which they found really fun. There were 2 girls, that kept grabbing me and were trying to get my full attention, both of the girls were so sweet, they kept hugging me, we were laughing, they kept touching my hair (it turned a bit light after 8 months in the sun, so it was interesting as it was different from their dark, black hair). The more time I spent with them, the sadder I was becoming – there were these sweet little kids, who lost both their parents, and all they needed was someone to pay them attention and make them feel special, even if just for a couple of minutes. Jan and I spotted there was another boat approaching the orphanage (a couple of Italians from our hostel and they too brought some food with them), so we thought it was about time to leave.
On our way back to the port, our driver asked Jan if he wanted to drive the boat, and Jan was totally up for it. You could tell he was loving
it, the look on his face said it all and surprisingly (😊) he brought us back safely.
The next day it was rest day and the day after that it was time...I was to see Angkor Wat. We got up really early as we took off at 6am. We hired a tuk – tuk for the whole day, as the area where the temples are is huge and it would take you days to go around the entire compound. The temples are set in one of the national parks and are one of the world's most preserved temples. You can purchase different kinds of tickets: either a one day, that will cost you $20, or 2 – 3 days, which will set you back for $40. Most people arrive to the temples early in the morning to see the sun rise and stay there for the whole day to see the sun set over the ancient ruins. We did neither 😊.
The tuk – tuk driver suggested us the route for the whole day at Angkor Wat, which included the 3 largest and most amazing temples: Bayon (known for huge statues of faces, looking at all 4 directions),
Ta Phrom (the huge trees growing out of the ruins of the temple are the most amazing feature of this site) and of course, Angkor Wat. A lot of the temple sites were under renovation, so it kind of lost that magical feel, but I was still in awe and I can definitely say it was worth the wait. The relief at Angkor Wat takes your breath away – so delicately done, each figure telling a story and it is amazing to think that all this was built when they did not have any huge building machines...it was all man made.
Going up and down the temples for the whole day was exhausting though and I was actually happy that we only took a single day ticket, as I was already “templed out” after that day.
The rest of our stay in Siem Reap was all about pampering ourselves, we went and partied as well (as it was long due) and we went to the best club in town (well not really the best but if you want to party and mingle this is THE place 😊: Angkor What? Awesome, awesome place, which gave Jan and I a
Vietnamese Floating Village
Boats meet your boat on the water, trying to sell you things or show off their snakes and charge for pics. This one didn't get far as Polona's face told them not to! couple of really funny memories – Jan knows what I am talking about 😊.
Our visa for far from being due, but we both really wanted to spend the holidays back in the best place in Thailand – Chiang Mai, so we left after spending 3 weeks in Cambodia.
We have been back in Chiang Mai for 12 days now, and it has been amazing....we were just reading, chilling and enjoying the place. We spent the New Year's eve with the Arsenal team (the match was on at 22.00 our time) and we had just enough time to run to the town centre to see the fire works. Arsenal won, so Jan was happy – ROBIN VAN PERISE!!! 😊. There were also a million of huge lanterns being released into the air (apparently it brings good luck), so I ran to buy one as well, so we should be soooooooo lucky in 2012 now (😊). We are off today, for the last part of our journey, which will be full on again. We are leaving for Bangkok tonight and we are flying to Sri Lanka tomorrow evening. So until next time...Happy New Year to everyone...
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