This is what walking around the temples will do to you.
Adrian's Blog
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Tag: Cambodia (page 2 of 3)
Total litres of water consumed: 8
Temples visited: 5
Hours in direct 37℃ sunlight: 6
We opted for a tour with a very nice tour guide by the name of Rath Sopheap. He was very informative and funny without being too dry and overloading you with information.
He took us round the temples in a good order because each one was more interesting to look at than the last (with the exception of Phnom Bakheng). In order, we did:
- Angkor Wat
- Ta Prhom
- Bakheng
- Angkor Thom
- Phnom Bakheng
There was a nice Mancunian couple in the same tour group as us. They have been traveling around Asia for a long time and are heading to Australia to work after they have toured Asia.
It was great having another British couple to share our annoyance at the arrogant drunk man in our group who boasted about every aspect of his life. His children are great, he is great, travelled everywhere, retired at 42, likes beer (chuffin’ clearly). I just don’t know how he isn’t a God. Total prink.
We visited the last temple at the top of a hill to watch the sunset. Only 300 people are allowed up there for safety reasons, so our guide dropped us off there earlier than the crowds so we could get a spot.
We were dropped off to go up the hill at 4pm. Sunset is not until 6pm here. I was well aware of the 2 hour gap, but wanted to see the view anyway. Once we’d got to the top, I checked out the view. I was nothing special. You couldn’t see any other temples and it was just greenery.
We all swarmed to the shade and sat on the roasting ground. But after 40 minutes of waiting, we called it day. The pictures of the sunset are not worth it on our opinion.
While sitting waiting for the sunset, this Asian guy next to us was too hot sitting on the stone ground. So he put his straw hat on the ground… he was visibly bracing himself by hovering his bum above it for a few seconds. He then lowered himself on to it and it very audibly crunched and he did not look in a good way according to his face. Once his arse reached the ground and the crunching stopped. People had turned heads and started laughing. ourselves included. Ruined a hat for that. He got up and left 3 minutes later anyway. What a waste of a hat!
The 4 of us (us and Charlotte and Scott the Mancunians) got tuk tuk back to town just before 5pm. Laura and I want straight to the pool after a shower and watched the sunset. We still had to wait 35 minutes for it and were glad we didn’t waste the time up the hill at the temples.
We had a great day. Extremely interesting, but the sunset thing is overrated.
p.s. the drunk man isn’t pictures here and wasn’t with us during any of the temple tours themselves. He just sat getting drunk, talked to dogs, and waited for the next stop. He reminded me of one of my uncles… I wonder if he thinks the earth is flat…
This… this isn’t right…
Cambodian chocolate leaves a lot to be desired…still had to eat 3 bits to make sure, though!
Siem Reap is a couple of degrees hotter that Phnom Penh at the moment. That doesn’t sound like much, but I’ll tell you that it is 37-39℃ during the day. Mental!
This place is very tourist oriented, with far more tuk tuks, street food, and restaurants. People will pester you a lot here for business, but you just have to be brutal and say no until they leave you alone. You get used to it and they do expect it anyway.
It’s like an Asian mini-Vegas as it reminds me of the strip there. It has music blaring out and lights everywhere!
I wanted to go here for dinner, but it might have been a tad adventurous for us. We settled on a place that was busy and the menu looked OK. We just got pizzas as it was easy. Couldn’t remember the name of it so I just Google searched it and it is called “Happy Special Pizza”. They did a lot more than pizza, though, so we didn’t know that pizza was their thing.
Sitting there starving, our food took 40 minutes to come. This place is a pub that serves food, and we were the only ones eating as far as we could see. The pizzas arrived, and they looked great, but we’re nothing special, in all honesty. Not terrible in any way, just not a decent pizza.
The bill was only $18 including a cocktail and a large bottle of water, so it was fine for the price.
After dinner we went to the night Market to have a gander. Basically, it’s endless amounts of tat, with added gumph. And they just don’t leave you alone. Mildly infuriating, but ignoring them is yet only way to deal with it.
As it happens, I left my favourite sunglasses on the bus (gutted when I realised! I was having such a relaxing time in the pool at the time too) on the way here so I had to find a half-decent pair to use for going to the temples tomorrow. Got some “Ray Bans” for $5 haggled down from $8. Rubbish but they’ll do. I’ll never get a pair like my favorite ones again. I’ll pull through.
I’m glad we started the trip off in Phnom Penh, as it is a generally a nicer, less touristy place.
Water we got with dinner tonight. If I ever need to ask for this in a shop, I won’t be able to keep a straight face.
The hotel was lovely. The staff were very welcoming and got us settled in our room within 10 minutes. They explained were we were in relation to the main areas of town. Showed us placed of interest to have a look at, or where we could get food.
This place has 2 pools. One at the front and one at the back near the breakfast/dinner area and bar.
The whole place is enclosed so you don’t see or hear any traffic.
One say we had lunch at the poolside. I just got a chicken and bacon club sandwich. This sandwich was fantastic! It was more than enough food and came with a pound of chips. You won’t be disappointed by the food, and the goes for breakfast too.
Lovely room. Air con was very much needed. We had a mosquito net on our bed too.
9 Reb points
😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹
(1 deducted because the wi-fi was sometimes annoying)
Had pancakes this morning again.. don’t fix anything that ain’t broken! we need the sugar energy for out adventures today.
Today we are off to feed some wild bears.
We are being picked up from location near our hotel by a car to take us to “Free The Bears”. It’s just us so that is nice!
The traffic is unbelievable at this time in the morning. people just turning round in front of you to change lanes, hoards of motorbikes travelling toward you on the wrong side of the main road and taking up a full lane. our driver just knocked over a bike, then nearly hit a tuk tuk! It’s crazy, but on the other hand the sight of a monk on a motorbike would cheer anyone up!
Looking out my window of the car, every shop we pass only sells one item: bike wheels, tiles, fizzy juice, bike helmets, fans, ornate wooden chairs, and that is only about a 200 meter stretch. Unusual to see shops only do 1 item. I don’t know how these people can weld and build things in this temperature, I’m sitting in an air-conditioned car and sweating!
We were stopped for about 10 minutes outside another hotel and I naturally assumed that we were picking another wild bear enthusiast up to travel with us. after the 10 minutes, a bilingual British guy opened the door to take an angle grinder from the footwell of the passenger-side front seat….and off we went….
When we arrived we watched a short induction presentation by our guide, then headed out.
All the animals in cages at this sanctuary are kept there only until they are better/old enough to be released back in to the wild. Many of them are in a breeding programme here. This place is not just a zoo for people to ogle at the li’l critters.
First stop was 2 little monkeys that were adorable. Then otters, lions, tigers, elephants, pythons, gibbons, leopards, deer, and last but not least, the bears.
Shortly after we visited the 2 or 3 of the different animals, we prepared the food for the bears. we had an assembly line to make up a snack for each of the bears in this part of the sanctuary.
At 12pm we stopped for lunch in the shade. We got very nice rice and stir-fry veg. To drink, we had a freshly-opened coconut. After all that, we rested on hammocks for the rest of the pit stop… I obviously swung about like a 5 year old, while Laura rolled here eyes at me.
I must mention that before lunch I wasn’t feeling to great and was glad to be sitting down. The 35℃ heat was getting to me. We were all chatting, then I had to jump up and run away from everyone I could to hide my shame. But before I could, I projectile vomited all over a barbeque in full view of our guide and the people who prepared our lunch. Not to mention, other tourists. I tried to explain that it was not the food that did it, but I think they still took offence. Needless to say, I now felt emotionally awful, as well as physically.
After everyone pretended that didn’t happen, we went on our merry way.
Next on the agenda was feeding the bears. We took the food we prepared earlier for the bears and threw them over the fence of their enclosure.
The funniest thing (apart from seeing my breakfast in reverse) was the fact that at one point we were visiting the elephants. Getting told about the horrible things that have happened to these poor animals and this Asian man was ignoring the elephants and taking pictures of us…
Absolutely fantastic day! Our guide is clearly committed to the cause of stopping harm to endangered species. She had a lot to say about every animal in this sanctuary and was very informative. Absolutely recommended to any animal lovers or people who can stand the heat without vomiting! 🙂
Now I can actually say for the first time: “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt!”
Our jaunt in and around Phnom Penh with a tuk tuk.
Full list of Vietnam / Cambodia videos can be found here on Youtube
Edit: I know the video has a clip in it that is rotated. Can’t fix it at the moment as all I have is my phone.
Today we got a tuk tuk ride around the city. From the doorstep of our hotel we went to The Killing Fields in Choeung Ek. After that, we visited the Toul Slang Genocide Museum.
The first thing we had to do today was haggle with the tuk tuk driver for the price of all the trips. He would be taking us to each location and back just waiting for us to go round the museums. We read you could do this tuk tuk ride for $15 but he wouldn’t go any lower than $20, so agreed on that price and set off. Not annoying at all because it is hardly expensive for the amount of time that you have the driver for anyway!
We set off before 9am to try and get a lot of the day done before it was too hot. So after a 30 minute tuk tuk, we arrived at The Killing Fields for an audio tour. This is highly recommended if you are thinking of going to Cambodia. It is difficult to listen to the atrocities that took place here, but you wouldn’t do the country justice of you did not give this a visit! Not to sound too ignorant, but, I had no idea of the scale and severity of what went in here in the mid-to-late ’70s.
Next up, after several close calls and a lot of weaving through traffic, we arrived at the Genocide Museum S21. Again, this was eye-opening. Well worth the visit of you are interested and haven’t been! This museum is mainly indoors (as it takes you through the prisoners cells and things out of the sun) so it would he best to do this one after the The Killing fields if you wanted to do what we did and do them both on the same day.
If you are in Cambodia and want to get an idea of what the Cambodian people have gone through, then this is a must! It is amazing that they went through this atrocity and still have a happy spirit and welcoming demeanour.
Full list of Vietnam / Cambodia videos can be found here on Youtube
Our breakfast today! Complete with fresh pashion fruit juice and a fancy syrup jug for ants.
Full list of Vietnam / Cambodia videos can be found here on Youtube
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