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.
