Siem Reap was our last stop in Cambodia. It is home to the Angkor archeological park, an area with temples built by the Angkor people over 1000 years ago, including the famous Angkor Wat. 

After a long bus ride from Phnom Penh, we were picked up by a friendly tuk tuk driver (we are always slightly afraid of the friendly ones..) who talked us into booking him to drive us around the large Angkor complex the next day. Somehow we actually agreed to it, which is unlike us as we usually want to walk away/think about such things alone first, but I guess he caught us at a weak moment – we originally thought we were going to be walking from the bus station to the hotel, but we were dropped off a lot farther than we expected. We agreed to a price of $23 for the day, starting at 5am for the sunrise at Angkor Wat – a lot of money for a tuk tuk driver in Cambodia, but we had spent $18 for a half day to go to the killing fields in Phnom Penh, and this guy was going to have to get up super early to take us out for sunrise, so we figured it must be about right. As soon as we went into the hostel, we were handed an offer of $14 for a tuk tuk driver for the day, and we cursed ourselves for not using our heads.

When we finally calmed down and decided to talk to the driver about the price in the morning, we borrowed two of the free bikes to head back to town to find dinner. We ended up at a pretty good restaurant, named Lilypop. We were looking forward to trying real Khmer food, but after eating here we decided that Cambodians don’t really have their own food culture. It seems their only national dish is fish or chicken amok, which is basically a sweet curry. We also had papaya salad for dinner, but it didn’t seem much different from Thai or Vietnamese versions of papaya salad.

The next morning, we quickly resolved the price issues – the hotel owner got up to let us out of the locked gate, and it turned out he wrote down the wrong price: it should have been $19 for the sunrise tuk tuk ride instead of $14. Our driver agreed to do it for $19, so we headed off on our long awaited trip to Angkor Wat. I have been wanting to visit this temple complex for years. I wonder if my expectations were too high..

When we got there, we had to pay $20 per person to get in. In US Dollars. We brought only enough for the day (remember, we are in Cambodia and don’t want to be carrying huge amounts of cash around – $65 for the day was more than we carried on any other day of this trip), so we were really annoyed when we went to hand two of our $20 bills to the attendant and she said she wouldn’t take them. “They are too old”, she said. These weren’t ugly taped together bills, and they were from 2007, and weren’t ridiculously dirty or anything, but she wouldn’t take them. Even though there were literally HUNDREDS of people in line for tickets and they were getting at least $20 from each person, what does it really matter if two bills aren’t brand spanking new?! They are getting hundreds of $20s!!! We finally got her to take one in addition to the two $10s we had for the tuk tuk driver so we didn’t have to go all the way back to town to get cash out of an ATM (yes, she said there was no ATM there either..), and we finally got in.

We got to the first stop, Angkor Wat, and bought some banh mi-like sandwiches with fried egg for breakfast, which were actually really good. We found a spot among the hoards of tourists awaiting the sunrise, and ate our sandwiches in a sort of bad mood, due to the $20 bill incident and also because there were so many loud obnoxious people waiting for sunrise that it really took away from the tranquil sunrise over the temple that we were looking for. There was really no escaping it, there were people in every single good spot that could be found. We should have known better, but for some reason we didn’t. So we sat and waited for the sun, which was rather nice to see once it finally came up.

   
   
After the sun rose, we spent some time exploring Angkor Wat. 

   
 
  
   

We got in line to go up to the temple in the previous picture, at the top of Angkor Wat, but I was not allowed in. Despite wearing a long skirt, a tank top, and a shawl covering my shoulders, I was not allowed in because “you could just take your scarf off” even though I had been wearing it all day..  I was pissed. I specifically wore all of these clothes in the super hot weather to try to respect their culture, and they still were not happy. There wasn’t even a “no scarves” image on their sign! It just said that you had to dress respectfully. Which I felt like I had. I could take off all my clothes if I wanted to!  But I wasn’t going to take off anything because I wanted to respect their temples! They didn’t mention at the gate that this would be a problem, and both the tuk tuk driver and the hotel manager said I would be fine with the clothing I had on. The worker already had another woman yelling at her and cursing her out, so we angrily moved on to another part of the temple.

    
   
The back corner of the temple was our favorite –  it was actually quiet! 

After Angkor Wat, we found our tuk tuk driver who took us to the next area, Angkor Thom. Here we continued our game of trying to take pictures with no tourists in them. It was really hard..

    
 

   
    
 
Chinese tourists can do what they want, but I can’t get in the temple with a scarf on my shoulders. 
  
  
This is the point were I really lost it. The above temple wouldn’t let me in either, because of the stupid “scarf rule”. For some reason it was more of a problem at some temples and less at others. It seemed so ridiculous. To comply with their rules, Thom could have taken off his shirt and let me borrow it to walk around the temple, while he sat shirtless in front of the temple.. But I was too busy crying over this ridiculous situation to attempt it (I think it was the first time I broke down in tears during this whole trip). So we walked away to take a break. I had waited for years to see this site, and it was being ruined by my own choice of clothing!! I was mad and sad and really annoyed with the whole day. After some angry shit talking about Angkor Wat, we decided to continue on, and try our luck with the rest of Angkor Thom.

   
    
   
After Angkor Thom, we spent some time at the infamous temple with trees growing out of the ruins. 

   
    

  
   
  
   
   
The last temple we walked around was where they did some filming for Tomb Raider.

    
   
This girl had no trouble getting into temple grounds..

    
 
After a long day of exploring temples, we headed back to our guesthouse for something to eat. We ended up chatting with the hotel owner’s husband who is also a school principal for an NGO-based school in Siem Reap. We talked about his school, which was well established and had several long term US volunteers working at it. We told him about the orphanage we worked at, and about this village healthcare book we wanted to get printed for the orphanage. We sent him a copy online, as he needed some information for teaching his kids about family planning, and he helped us print out the book and sent it to the orphanage for us! It was so nice to have him helping us complete that task, as the price for printing the book was $30 for us and $15 for him, and he knew exactly how to get it to the orphanage – by paying a minivan driver $2 to drop it along a route they drive passengers on. We never would have figured it all out on our own! He even called Mr Kim, the owner of CPOC, to confirm the address, which was great because when we had told Mr Kim about the principal sending the book, he was hoping to talk to the principal since he had so much experience! 

Our last day, we spent some time planning how to get to Bangkok from Siem Reap, then took a bike ride to the countryside. Our hotel was only about a 10 minute bike ride from the city center, but when we rode about 30 minutes away from the city we were really out in the countryside – the city ended so quickly! It was nice to get away from the city for a little break, and back to the countryside that reminded us of the area around the orphanage. 

   

   

 

  

The next day we headed on a long 13 hour journey across the border to Thailand to get to  Bangkok, to meet up with my sister and her boyfriend who would join us in our travels for a week!