Mekong Express

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July 7: Mekong Express
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Early in the day, I set out on my trip to Siem Reap. In truth, I set out for the lobby of Frangipani. The Mekong Express bus company had a shuttle picking me up outside. The shuttle arrived at around 8 am while I checked for an acknowledgement from my hotel in Siem Reap about the pick up arrangements. This of course was after the breakfast.
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The shuttle had another group of 4 on it. The seats were low and cramped. I remarked that at 5'5", I was feeling claustrophobic and asked how they were doing. This was a group of British students and they were all at least half a foot taller. They were in Cambodia after spending the previous few days in Laos. We reached the bus station soon. The bags were checked in. And I took my seat, 1A.
An interesting thing happened on the way out. Before leaving the city limits, the bus turned off the highway and stopped in front of a Buddhist temple, sought blessings (?) and then turned back to hit the highway. The temple was located on a plot next to a Cham mosque. Snacks and water were distributed. I promptly powered on my laptop and started typing the first few pages of the blog. The scenes outside were typically rural and bucolic. The houses on stilts fascinated me for the initial part of the journey.
The bus had a fairly big Samsung LCD TV mounted front and center above the driver's head. John Carter and Journey 2 were the movies everyone had to endure.<strong id="internal-source-marker_0.296849200502038">The bus stopped after we had travelled a bit more than half way. A big wayside restaurant was the official stop for 30 minutes. I was not hungry. But ordered some fishy dish which I enjoyed very much. It had a green mangoes and pineapple based gravy which gave it a very tangy sweet and sour taste.
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The next part of the journey took about 2 more hours. At the end of which we reached the bus station in Siem Reap. Baggage tags were checked before being handed over. My hotel's transfer shuttle driver was waiting, holding a large framed name board. In hindsight, I should have declined the complimentary transfer offer. They had sent a huge 9 seater van just to pick one person. But the hotel was not very far from the bus station. So, there was a degree of redemption.


After check-in at Tara Angkor (a really fancy 4 star hotel at $45 per night because it is a little farther from the city center), I headed to the pool with my Frommer's Cambodia in tow, to plan out my itinerary. About 15 minutes later, the skies darkened with thick storm clouds and heavy gusts of wind started to dislodge and strew around the umbrellas and foam pads on the deck chairs. The hotel pool staff asked people to clear the open area and occupy the covered area nearby. But I headed back to the room and waited out a huge downpour that lasted about an hour. I was glad that I included an extra day at Siem Reap incase any day got rained out. Once it subsided, I decided to walk towards the city center and find a place to get dinner. Along the way I stopped to take pictures along the way. I walked past the FCC restaurant in Siem Reap, deliberately, in order to try other places. I settled on the first one that claimed to serve Khmer food. It was called Viroth.



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I was too tired to walk back and looked for a tuk-tuk outside. In reality the tuk-tuk sought me out, given that there are so many of them waiting for customers outside every touristy spot, which is pretty much everywhere in Siem Reap. The price demanded was $2, which I was told was the right night-time fare. However, I made a deal with the driver to take me to Angkor Wat the following 3 days as a full day engagement at $15 per day, and charge me a dollar for the trip to the hotel which was hardly a kilometer away. Samadeach, the tuk-tuk driver, was quite happy at the prospect of a guaranteed customer and deterministic revenue, with trips probably totaling less than 20 km each of the following 3 days.


The next day's itinerary included trips to Angkor Wat and the walled city of Angkor Thom.

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