ManMeng's Lifepad

It would be my first trip to this mysterious yet infamous place, known as Siem Reap, Cambodia. As usual, I prepared for the worst, and from what I read on the internet, nothing could be worst than being unprepared. Perhaps you might been told countless times about the bad pollution in the city?

Mosquito coils, repellents, and a lot of various medications are essential. However I would really like to rant that it is pretty hard to arrange a transportation to the airport. There is of course several ways you can go to the KLIA LCC Terminal, from cars, taxis to buses. However things would get pretty rough when your flight is at 7AM in the morning, which means you need to get prepared by 3AM to reach the airport for check-in by 5AM.

Modes of transport :

• Give a call to your friend or family to fetch you on a car
• Get on a bus at KL Sentral, however the first known bus to operate is at 3:30AM, which you would reach the airport by 4:30AM (if nothing happens, that is)
• Call a cab, but be prepared to fork out RM120 – RM150, no matter if they’re on a fixed price or metered. Because there will eventually be a midnight-surcharge of 50% on top of your cab fare. Sounds pretty depressing isn’t it? Best option if you are travelling with 4 or more people in a group.
• Drive your car and park at the terminal’s car park. Daily parking rate approximately around RM70, plus with the petrols, tolls. Probably you need to live with the fact of spending RM100 – RM200 and a fear of your car missing.
• Inevitably, you need to face the fact that you need also a mode of transport when you get back from your trip. But it would be less depressing if your flight reaches the airport on the afternoon. Still, be prepared to fork another extra RM100 on cab-fare.

Even though you are on a budget-minded trip, these are those hidden cost that will slowly consume you away, mentally.

Do you know that it is possible to do a self-checkin at the terminal? Of course what you need to do is to prepare a copy of the itenary which the machine will scan the barcodes. Not sure if it will work if you try to place your iPhone or iPod Touch to scan the barcodes.

And finally, it would print a boarding pass for you.

You would ask, what about my luggage?

Essentially, the self check-in mechanism works best when you only have your hand carry luggage, but you can still do a self luggage-drop in at the Baggage Drop counter. Sadly, it’s pretty slow, and doesn’t make any difference if you queue at the normal counter.

It would take approximately 3 hours for us to arrive at our destination. Nothing exciting to talk about except on part below. The timezone would be +7 GMT, similar to Thailand.

Remember that we have to fill up the immigration card every time we go into another country? And the stewardess would hand us the cards/paper? We did what we could, and filled all of our information inside.

Actually it felt much like Malaysia instead.

Remember that I mentioned about the immigration card earlier? It appears that 100% of the passengers from the flight need to re-queue and obtain a “valid” immigration card from their checkpoint authority.

Which looked like this. So do not waste your time filling up the forms on the plane if it doesn’t look like the one above.

The entire ordeal lasted about 45 minutes.

It would come to no surprise why I did not mention about foreign currency at the top of the post, because you simply can’t exchange for their currency in Malaysia.

And as usual, the rule of thumb is to prepare a ratio of 3 : 2 : 1 currency between US Dollar, (Cambodia) Khmer Riel and Thai Baht.

The Khmer Riel

I’ve chose Golden Temple Villa for our stay. It was pretty hard to decide on a place to stay as there a pretty huge list to choose from. The main site that I would usually use would be HostelWorld.com and it’s AppStore’s app. Perhaps the best thing about this place is they would prepare a transport to bring you from the airport to their guest-house. Meet…Noy. He’s pretty shy but gets the job done.

Considering that this place would be one of the most visited spot among the other countries in the South East Asia region, you will be surprised to see a lot of old Japanese cars are being used a new car here, notably the Toyota Camry.

Surprisingly, petrol stations around the town are looking pretty good.

The main attration to this place? The mythical ancient city of Angkor.

In case you are wondering, one of the main mode of transport here would be the Tuk-Tuk. Although they did share the same name from their neighbouring country, but the appearance of this vehicle is entirely different.

It’s actually a pretty rare sight to see someone riding at the back of the motorcycle wearing any helmet. Reason? It’s ruled that only the person that is riding the motorcycle here in Cambodia are required to wear a helmet. Shocking?

It wouldn’t take more than 30 minutes to go from the airport into the town. We were pretty hungry as it was about noon as we reach our guest house.

You might start to freak out when you arrive as the peoples working in this place are very friendly. Internet, wifi are provided. What more can you ask for? I’m very pleased with this place. A top recommendation.

While they are preparing the room, you will be greeted with this great lime juice. The best thing about this place? The restaurant are located within the guesthouse, outside of the front door.

I did not hesitate and ordered my lunch. It was fabulous.

And then there’s breakfast. (We found out that it’s only 9AM in the morning at Siem Reap)

And desserts as well!

A quick look at the Khmer Riel.

So how do you get around the town besides Tuk-Tuk? It’s really hard to spot a taxi here, because it’s uncommon. Another mode of transport would be bicycle. You can rent it from your guesthouse for USD1 – USD 2 per day, or in our instance, our guesthouse rent it to us for free.

What a sight, a dominant bank in Malaysia, is here in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

And to our knowledge, we found out that it’s the only KFC here in Siem Reap.

It looks familiar inside.

But the prices are in US Dollar.

And again, It was really unexpected, but the taste of the Zinger burger here is spectacular. It seems like they have pineapple slice (!) and crunchy peanut bits inside!

This would be the infamous Pub Street, in daylight. Perhaps there is nothing much worth shouting about at this day of time, where it will only come to live at night.

Near to the Pub Street you will find the Wet Market, known as Psar Chas. Closely resembles the Malay language Pasar, which means Market. It feel quite at home as the wet market in Malaysia feels pretty much the same. 

What is inside the market?

A lot of vegetables

Random goods

Preserved meats.

Tonic drinks :O

And a lot of t-shirts. You might notice that most of the t-shirt quality are incomparable to Thailand, which is something quite common here.

However as you might notice, there are quite a growing number of touting tuk-tuk service, and especially some random dudes without an uniform, which is illegal. Some said that these illegal tuk-tuk operator came largely from Vietnam and is causing quite some social problem around the neighbourhood, such as robbery (gulp!) and overcharging. It would be your best bet to avoid these at all cost.

Just a reference, look at the top picture, which a proper legal tuk-tuk driver would have a vest with number printed on the back of it.

Besides from sightseeing around the town in the afternoon, what else could you do?

The answer obviously is, going into Angkor!

However for your information, tourist entrance to the ancient city are calculated based on a day-ticket. You could arrange a tuk-tuk transport from your guesthouse into Angkor the distance is approximately around 15 – 20KM from the town. The tickets are available at the Angkor ticket counter, which you can buy in :

• One day pass : 15USD (if I recalled correctly)
• Three days pass : 40USD
• Seven days pass : 60USD

I would strongly recommending you to purchase the 3-day pass and if your flight is on the morning like us, wait until late afternoon and purchase the ticket, and enter Angkor after 5PM to catch the sunset, which your ticket will still be valid for the next 3 day (in result, you get 4 days!).

Though it is not necessary, you can prepare a mask to brace all those incoming dusts along the way to Angkor. I can tell you, it’s pretty dusty.

There’s pretty lot of thing along the journey that would keep your eyes and cameras busy.

Looks like some newly completed guest house.

Dragon fruit for sale.

And some oddly shaped fruit.

If you have seen the maps of this place from Google Maps, you will notice the road into Angkor is a pretty straight stretch. It’s pretty amusing how long it would take to go from the city into the center of the ancient city.

You will get to see local students cycling in and out of Angkor.

People chilling out.

You may not know it, but Siem Reap has earned the achievement of being the worst road in the world (pun intended). There are absolutely pot holes almost everywhere.

And here we are, at the ticket counter that resembles the expressway toll in Malaysia (green in colour).

Periodically, there would be tourist police or personnel that will ask for your ticket, so keep it with you all the time.

You would notice that there is a vast amount of people from different countries, especially Japan.

And yes, did I mention the ticket would have a picture of you inside?

And when the necessary preparations are done, the tuk-tuk driver brought us into this magical place.

If you are not on a tour, it is advisable to hire a tour guide which will take you around Angkor. You might feel the price are pretty steep, with some are charging for 70USD per day, but it is really worth the price.

And there is of course a lot of things that I couldn’t find a word to describe the beauty of this place at first sight. It is so vast and amazing that human can build these in the past.

Be prepared that the road condition would turn from bad to worse, most of the times it is not entirely paved. Despite that, your jaw might drop from all the surrounding mega trees. Feels like you are inside the World of Warcraft : Real Life.

These are the tourist police on duty. Doesn’t seem to be much of a help actually.

This would be the most famous spot for tourist to get on top of Siem Reap and witness the sun setting down behind Angkor Wat.

Expect to do some minor hiking up the hill. But perhaps you should watch out for steps during peak seasons as there will be a lot of people moving up and down hill.

This path seems to be leading the way up to Phonm Bakheng, but it is closed, perhaps in the olden days, soldiers are marching up these.
 

The Phonm Bakheng.

Expect to see a lot of people on top of the monument.

Though there isn’t any official explanation that I’ve known, the steps built on Phonm Bakheng forces you to climb up sideway. So you have to be careful, especially if you are carrying a heavy load of cameras with you.

Not camera trick, but it’s really steep.

So what do we do up here? Nothing. Essentially it’s a great spot for sunset-spotting. However due to the massive amount of people, you can barely see and feel anything around. In result, what can you see? People.

Look, there’s a balloon!

If you are keen to have a bird-eye’s view on Angkor, you should get to the hot air balloon, which would operate during the peak-season, from November – January. It’s regrettable that we couldn’t get on it due to bad weather.

Since there are nothing much to really shout about apart from seeing a lot of people with cameras, I would recommend you to get down from Phnom Bakheng before the sky turns dark, and before everyone starts to descend downhill with you.

No tourist are allowed to go into Angkor at night, and there isn’t a hotel inside at all (as far as I know), as soon we have done with the sunset, we head back for dinner.

Dinner time, Khmer style!

Having tried dishes from Thailand and Laos, Khmer dishes are essentially pretty mild in terms of spice but more towards the use of coconut milk.

The portion are so big for 2 person that we can start with above…

And end with above…

And obviously, a meal wouldn’t be complete without a bottle of Angkor!

Thank you for reading the log, I will be posting the complete set of the log on my trip to Cambodia within the next few days or week.

In case you would like to check on the rest of the series:

• [Travel] Part 1 of 5, Cambodia
• [Travel] Part 2 of 5, Cambodia
• [Travel] Part 3 of 5, Cambodia
• [Travel] Part 4 of 5, Cambodia
• [Travel] Part 5 of 5, Cambodia