"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness… Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime" – Mark Twain
The last day of our trip, we had time to waste. In the morning, we braved the streets of Hanoi to find an ATM before finding a café with an upstairs patio to drink some Vietnamese coffee. Once we were more awake, we hung out at our apartment until we had to check out at noon.
We found a fancy Vietnamese vegetarian restaurant for lunch, which had incredible food.
However, it also had a ton of mosquitos inside somehow. And by a ton, there were probably like 2 but they both found me and had a feast because that is just my fate in life. So, instead of time there, we ate and hurried out.
I figured a good way to occupy part of the afternoon before spending 30 hours on planes and in airports would be to get a massage. So I found a place online that was nearby with great reviews. It was catered to the locals rather than tourists, and I was interested in stepping outside my comfort zone a bit and having a unique experience, so I jumped on it.
That was one big step outside my comfort zone, but well worth it! No one there spoke any English, so I pointed at the Standard Package on the menu (cost equivalent to about $15 for an hour and 45 minutes), not knowing what I was getting into, and someone came and led me away.
Immediately, they brought me to some lockers, where they signaled I should take my clothes off and leave them there. And I mean all my clothes. There was no room for insecurity here. I was then led to a shower and given a shower cap. Next up was a cup of herbal tea while sitting in an herb-infused wooden barrel bathtub. And then some more soaking in a jacuzzi tub with an exfoliating back scrub. This was followed by the steam room that smelled again very strongly of herbal tea. I soaked my feet in a bucket while relaxing before I could stand the heat no longer. When I came out, they had me shower again and then led me upstairs to the massage room.
That’s where the real magic happened. They used several techniques and were very thorough, working from my face and scalp, to my neck and shoulders, my arms, my hands, my legs, my feet, even my stomach before I flipped over for them to repeat everything on my back. It was incredible, and well worth the $15.
Once I was done, I met back up with Anthony and was served some fresh fruit and more tea. We went and got our shoes and headed out, back to the lake to hang out in a café for awhile before dinner.
We ate dinner at a delicious Indian restaurant, grabbed a beer at Bromance, picked up our luggage, and got an Uber to the airport, sad to leave, as we always are.
Also, here’s a picture I forgot to upload of a cool cloud with a colorful halo formed by ice crystals that we saw in Cambodia. It was awfully purdy, and I couldn’t let it go to waste ;).
On our second day in Siem Reap, we finally ventured into the city. At least when you’re a tourist, getting a ride “into town” means going to Pub Street, the ultra touristy part of town. I like it, though. It’s great seeing how the locals live and getting out of our element, but it’s also nice having a retreat back into what we are more accustomed to from time to time. Pub Street is filled with restaurants and bars and shops that cater to tourists.
I bought a couple skirts, we sent a postcard, drank a couple mojitos, ate some ice cream… and then we were approached by “Batman Driver.” His tuk tuk was decorated with a batman theme, and he came dancing over to us, singing the theme song, and then loudly introducing himself and insisting we look him up on Tripadvisor. It was a tad obnoxious, but we did need a ride out into the countryside to see the temple Banteay Srei (“Lady Temple”), and he spoke good English which is, of course, helpful for us, so after a tiny bit of bartering, we hired him.
He bragged about how fast he drives and how old people hate him, and sure enough, when we climbed in, he tore off, passing all the other tuk tuks in the street, and swerving around singing the batman theme song some more.
The drive to Banteay Srei was a long one, but it was rather pleasant looking out at the various stores and farms through the countryside.
We arrived at the hottest part of day, and it was a bright, harsh sun, but the temple really was spectacular.
It’s an extremely old temple, built in the 10th century, older than Angkor Wat, and is an almost pink sandstone with the most intricate details.
It’s also a rather small temple, though, so we were done in half an hour. We found batman, and were once again on the road.
We took a break from the heat by cooling off in our fabulous pool.
And then we made another trip to Angkor Wat, to see its magnificence in the later afternoon, when the crowds were smaller. But it was hot. We sat down in the shade for a bit to drink some cold coconut water and people watch, a favorite pastime of ours.
The lack of crowds and late afternoon sunlight made up for the insufferable heat though. We stood side-by-side with the monks mopping sweat off their foreheads, and just took in the beauty.
And took pictures. Because you have to. This is the kind of thing that you need handheld memories of.
Once we had our fill, we went back to Pub Street for dinner. We watched groups of people ogle the food stand with bugs and scorpions and snakes, and even watched a group of brave Australians taste-test all of it. Their verdict seemed to be that the scorpion was the worst, and the snake was the best.
We found a less busy restaurant and went up to the upstairs patio for better people watching. I like the food in Cambodia. There are a lot of vegetarian options for me, and the flavors tend to be sweet and spicy, or sweet and sour. It’s pretty delicious. And cheap. Cheap is pretty great too. Our dinner, in what I would assume is the priciest part of town, included four beers, one appetizer, and two entrees for a grand total of $15.
The next day, we woke up and arrived at Ta Prohm just after opening time to try to see it with fewer people. That part, we succeeded in.
However, the sun was already extremely harsh, making the lighting not the best and making us sweat pretty much instantly. Still pleasant though.
We met back up with our tuk tuk driver and he took us to Ta Keo.
Here, I had a bunch of scary steps to climb up. I had recovered from my stair hatred, but these ones were steep and shallow, and the going up was one thing, but going back down made me feel like I was going to plummet to my death.
Our next and final stop was Preah Khan, and honestly, we may have saved the best for last. To be fair, there were dozens of temples we hadn’t seen at all, so maybe my favorite is still out there, but Preah Khan was pretty beautiful.
It’s largely been left unrestored, so there are many ruins throughout, as well as the trees growing on and within similar to Ta Prohm and Ta Nei. It was also huge. We weren’t even able to explore all of it.
We went through the middle of it, checking out the shrines, the carvings, and the hallways of doorways.
We also went around the outside of it a ways, trying to get a sense of what it had looked like in its prime.
Even the moat outside of Preah Khan was pretty.
Once we were done at the park, we had 5 and a half hours to kill between check out and our ride to the airport, so we went back into town for lunch and shopping and hanging out.
We don’t typically shop on trips, but I’m a sucker for colors and elephants, which this town is full of. Plus everything is so CHEAP. We have limited space since we’re carry-on only though, so I had to not go overboard.
Check out time was at noon, and our flight wasn’t until 8 pm, but our hotel was nice and stored our luggage and let us hang by the pool for awhile and take a shower before giving us a free ride to the airport. Our flight was not delayed this time, which was pretty great, and we made it to our AirBnB on West Lake by 11pm.
We had a wall of windows looking out over the lake which was nice, but we didn’t have any bottled water waiting for us, so we went walking down the street in search of some, taking in the atmosphere. It was still very much Hanoi, but quite a bit calmer than being in the middle of Old Quarter. Right next to our apartment was a place called “Bromance & Beer” with a group of people having a jovial time, so we stopped there for some water and beer overlooking the water, enjoying our last night before heading home.
After a long day of traveling and flight delays, we finally landed in Siem Reap around 9 pm. We got through immigration and stepped outside where our driver was sitting cross-legged on the ground waiting for us. He took my suitcase and showed us to our tuk tuk, and off we went, through the refreshingly calm streets of Siem Reap.
We arrived at our little boutique hotel at about 10 pm, met with a cold towel and delicious fruit drink. We were shown to our room which was amazing.
The best part is that we take one step outside our door to our patio, and then another step and we are right in the beautiful pool.
Other than the rooms, the hotel is all open air, and it’s lovely. Gardens everywhere, lizards and frogs entertaining us during meal times.
I wasted no time in getting to bed though, as we had to wake up at 4 am for our sunrise tour at Angkor Wat! The ticket booth was already crowded when we got there at 5 am, but our guide got us through quickly, and we got a front row seat to view Angkor Wat at sunrise from outside the gate. It was a little bit far away, and it was cloudy so we didn’t get a colorful sunrise, but it was still beautiful and peaceful, listening to the jungle come alive as the towers of Angkor Wat became more and more visible.
Once we had our fill, our guide took us back to the hotel for breakfast, and then back we went to Angkor Archaeological Park to visit the temples. We stopped outside the east gate of Angkor Wat to get some history before I started snapping away with my camera. And then we were walking in, already impressed just by the gate.
Angkor Wat is beyond impressive, the largest religious monument in the world, built in the early 12th century. It was originally a Hindu temple, dedicated to the god Vishnu, but was then transformed toward the end of the century into a Buddhist temple. You can see characteristics of both religions throughout.
Our tour guide was fabulous about pointing out the different carvings and decor and giving us the stories behind them. Such intricate details everywhere we looked.
We got to go up to the top of the temple for views around.
Once we made it through, we could see the huge crowds of people coming from the west gate. What’s amazing is that we are here in low season – our guide said there are 3 times as many people in high season.
Once we got outside of the temple, there were a couple monkeys lounging around, calmly taking in the vast numbers of people walking by and snapping pictures of them. They’re smart monkeys; they know tourists will feed them.
We took in some more beautiful views from the west before hopping in our car to move on to another part of the park.
Next up was the old capital city of Angkor Thom. We were met by monkeys playing on tops of pagodas, and elephants giving rides to tourists, which of course made me sad.
Several temples make up Angkor Thom, the most popular of which is the Bayon.
The Bayon is the temple of smiling faces.
The faces and the doorways provided ample photo opportunities, though there was always the give and take of waiting for everyone else to take their own pictures and then them waiting for us to take ours.
We visited a couple other temples in Angkor Thom, including Baphuon and who knows what else.
We got away from the other tourists a bit by driving a little bit to one of the gates.
Our last visit before lunch was Ta Nei, possibly my favorite temple of the day. Certainly not as “impressive” as the bigger temples, but it was so unique and no one else was there.
It was never completely finished, and much of what was there had been destroyed. Trees were growing on top and within it.
We had a tasty lunch at a restaurant in the park and then drove over to the entrance of Ta Prohm, which has gained a lot of popularity as the “Tomb Raider temple”.
The temple is truly beautiful, similar to Ta Nei though bigger with more going on.
Unfortunately, it was packed with tourists and so was hard to navigate and get the pictures we wanted.
The sun was coming out, so it was getting awfully hot, but that was our last temple of the day, so we climbed back in the car, our driver passing over our ice cold lemon water infused towels, and water bottles. We got pretty spoiled to having the guide and the driver. My sore legs much appreciated the limited amount of walking we had, and Anthony was pleased to have the occasional A/C and cold towels :).
We enjoyed our pool outside our door once we arrived back at the hotel.
Completely exhausted but not wanting to nap and screw up our sleep schedule again, we just took it easy, hanging out at the hotel and eating dinner there. I swear we had the whole place to ourselves… other than the critters.
