January 18th, 2023
The night bus to Siem Reap was pretty good in the end. We got to stay in a double sleeper cubby, and it was nice and dark. Unfortunately, I really had to pee but the bus driver kept stopping and closing the door, then disappearing for long periods of time. I was so confused and kept getting up, checking for him, going back…. Then at 5am I figured out there was a bathroom on the bus. Whomp whomp.
We got in to Siem Reap and biked to our hotel. The guy who checked us in was so nice and let us check in early since our room was empty anyway! We had showers, and then set out for breakfast and a full day of temples!
Breakfast was a very nice latte with a baked good, and we cycled most of the way to the park to what we thought was the ticket office, but was actually a ticket checking point. They sent us back 4 km into town to go to the welcome center to buy our day pass - quite expensive at $37 each, and Max read online that they publish monthly revenue from ticket sales and it was 2.5 million USD in December 2022. Crazy.
As soon as you get into the park, you understand why. The temples are incredible and so well preserved. Some were built from as early as the 10th century. There are great roads for cycling between them, with beautiful trees… it was a fantastic day.
We saw probably two dozen temples, and actually explored more than half of them on foot. We started with Angkor Wat, the most famous one, and we hired a guide (David) for that one specifically. He told us lots of super cool information about what went into the engineering and construction so many centuries ago, including the use of thousands of elephants to move the huge, heavy stones. He told us about some of the Buddhist and Hindu symbolism, and some of the stories or things that inspired the intricate carvings on every wall, floor and ceiling. It was absolutely insane. We got to climb to the third level (the place only the king could go, to interact with the heavens) and each step was narrow and approximately knee height. People seemed to get bad vertigo from it! The entire complex is surrounded by a huge moat - I’ll pause there but it was so beautiful and so incredible to see. I think it helped us appreciate / understand what we saw at the rest of the temples.
Some of my other favourites were a temple that was built in the middle of a lake, and one that had trees growing on the buildings, and apparently is where Tomb Raider was filmed.
The bad parts: people accosted us wherever we went trying to get us to buy food or water. Max and I must have said “no thank you” about a thousand times. One security guard offered to take our photo for us, which seemed so nice, and then promptly requested a tip for it… oh well. And: it was insanely hot. When you were biking and in the trees, it was actually quite a nice temperature, but scrambling around on the temple rocks and climbing the huge staircases, there was no shade. The rock seemed to radiate with heat, and we had to cover our shoulders as well as knees for me (as a female). We were so sweaty.
We finished the day after about eight or nine hours of non stop exploring. We headed back to the hotel to shower, then went to book a bus to Bangkok - unfortunately our favourite bus refused to attempt to take bikes over the Thailand border. So we tried a different bus, and they charged a lot but agreed to do it. Thank goodness.
Finally (I was so hungry at this point), we went out for specialty spring rolls at this beautiful little restaurant that also had fancy cocktails. We sat on a blanket in the garden, and it was so nice. We moved on to “pub street” to see all the fun there, and there seemed to be a Cambodian celebrity who was being photographed by the paparazzi! A mystery to us.
The next morning we went for another delicious breakfast (mine was mostly fruit, yoghurt and seeds, mmmmm mm mm) and tried to plan our next few weeks. Max managed to track down a bike shop that will package our bikes for us, and store them in Bangkok! We also found out that Duncan has had four to six house viewings per week in the last two weeks, and there is a two hour home inspection this weekend. Uh oh. Sad news if it means the place sells, but not much we can do and the soonest we could be kicked out is well after we get back. He also said the plants are “mostly good”. Cue panic. (Just kidding).
We rode our bikes toward some other temples hoping we could get some ride-by viewings, but to no avail. We did stop at the butterfly conservatory that had so many beautiful plants and butterflies. It was actually super cool and our guide taught us some interesting facts about butterflies.
We wound up riding over 80 km through mostly Cambodian farmland, small villages and a few forests. It was a really nice ride! Though, probably our last one of the trip unfortunately.
We got back and showered, then headed to “Haven” for dinner. Oh my gosh it was good - Max has been complaining that Cambodia doesn’t take their food and coffee as seriously as Vietnam, but this place made us the most delicious curry and a very good ginger vegetables stir fry, all on steamed red rice. Almost morning glory levels of good!! But not quite. We walked past a monk school and over the bridge, then through the old market and the night market. We went back to our hotel which we booked for an extra night to have a staging ground - we read our books and tried to nap until 11pm or so, then packed up and headed for the bus station. Another night bus… Oof. wish us luck getting our bikes across the border!
