Part Four: Siem Reap, Cambodia

There are 4 ways we knew of to go from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap: Bus, Private Car, Boat and Fly; we chose Bus. The bus trip is a little over six hours, very inexpensive, and the road is 'bumpy' in a Cambodian kind of way. Animals large and small leisurely sashay about in the middle of the road, people enter and exit traffic at whim, motorcycles at left, right and center, big trucks and then a few cars. Every creature large and small and vehicles of every description all vying for a space on the road. There are a lot of rice fields to look at along the way. Businesses and homes are right on the road. There is a ton of horn honking and crazy driving going on.

We were only in Vietnam and Cambodia for a few weeks and therefore are not in a position to offer expert travel advice, nor do we pretend to. But about riding the bus in both countries there are two things worth mentioning: 1.) Sit far enough
away from the front of the bus to get away from the driver honking his horn, and 2.) Don't sit in the very back of the bus due to the bouncing effect from the potholes. ….although, on one bus in Vietnam a bunch of us in the back seat had a hilarious time watching Matt bounce around while trying to nap through jet lag.

Sna met us at a dusty bus stop in Siem Reap holding a cardboard sign with our names. Just like Tola, he was our constant guide for the next five days in Siem Reap. We had no hotel plans so he took us to the New Riverside Hotel and that worked out well. The cost of our room included breakfast and a swimming pool. A nice informal restaurant was attached to the hotel. The staff at the hotel and restaurant were incredibly gracious and hard working. We watched the staff as they dealt with large crowds of Chinese tourists who were loud in their large numbers and we were amazed at the composure of the Cambodian hotel employees.

Siem Reap is a town that has gone through incredible recent growth to accommodate the tourists who visit Angkor Wat. The town sort of feels quickly put together and largely still happening where anything is possible. It's just a few hours by road from Thailand. Parts of the temple complexes of Angkor Wat are a 10 or 15 minute Tuk-Tuk ride from Siem Reap. The town itself sits on a river. Hotels, guesthouses and restaurants abound.
Most tourists spend their days going from one temple to the other and then go back to their hotels and then out on the town in Siem Reap for the evening for dinner and strolling about. This might sound slightly boring but really isn't at all.

Matt very proudly and with great bargaining flourish (he thinks to this day) bought two swords somewhere in Siem Reap. The swords reminded me of Beater and Biter from the Lord of the Rings. This was his thing, Swords, (along with Sunglasses- more on that later) and holding them they brought a brighter paler blue to his eyes. Matt has very blue eyes to begin with. He negotiated their prices and was assured by the clerk that there would be absolutely no trouble taking them more than 15,000 miles back home across several international scrutinizing borders, which he believed, not the least of which would be Hong Kong where
there are fines for almost anything. (How could anyone in Cambodia possibly know this safe travel with glow in the dark Ork swords, you might ask?) Well at least we weren't going back through Canada where the serious Canadians would have summoned Mounties from all over. But the plight of Matt, his swords and myself as we were swiftly and discretely taken to a back security room in the Saigon Airport is a story for later as we attempt to exit Vietnam with the Cambodian Swords in our possession. And we were successful, I might add., thanks to the super cool Vietnamese customs guys.

The Angor Wat temples are huge stone building complexes that began to be built by King Suryavarman II in the early 12^th century. Angkor Wat was a civilization that existed in the millions of people when Paris had a mere population of 50,000. So travelers from all continents converge here now to see the sights. Asian tourists appear to be the most apparent especially with large tour groups of Chinese and Koreans cloistered together in tours traveling in bands of 500 or more. The presence of so many tourists at some of the more popular temples can make the temple experience less so than hoped for. Sna took us to some of the temples when the hordes were elsewhere and these were some of the finer temple times.

But there are a number of places where if you have a problem with slopes or heights or that type of gradient thing, then, well, go see for yourself. There were some wide stairs ascending to the skies where height and slope and width weren't problems at all but still it was better to inch down to safety on one's butt. And this was oblivious to the 50 Chinese tourists always anxiously pushing behind to get on to their next destination. Matt
went to the top of several temples while I explored below. It had nothing to do with climbing or incline, more to do with slope and you will know exactly what I'm talking about if the top of a ladder just isn't the place for you.

One evening in Siem Reap we stumbled into an open air sidewalk store where the owner had a lot of paintings on canvases. His collection was not so much different than
other businesses. The paintings were beautiful Cambodian scenes in vibrant colors and detail. He told us they were painted by people who were not very mobile due to injury, perhaps from the land mines. The business owner was in his early 30's, his mother was there and his 2 or 3 year old daughter. We spent quite some time there and decided
these paintings would be our souvenirs for friends and relatives to take home. Between the two of us we bought about a dozen paintings of all sizes. The owner wrapped them up in bamboo tubes. We could tell our purchases were a huge stroke of luck for him. We didn't try to negotiate any lower pricing here as we thought his prices were more than fair for what we received in return.

In Cambodia the beer is Angkor, the buses are Angkor, the hotels are Angkor, stores are Angkor, everything is Angkor. The Cambodian beer was very good but the Vietnamese beer in the green bottle was the best. Matt loved this whole beer thing right from the start on Cathay Pacific Airlines. Free beverages were for the asking on Cathay Pacific and Matt right away took advantage of that because in Alaska at 19 he couldn't legally drink but in air space he could. Also throughout Vietnam and Cambodia Matt was free as a bird to order beer for the both of us, and he did so often!

The memories of this trip bring back thoughts of kind and gracious people throughout Vietnam and Cambodia. It's not clear whether our positive traveling experiences were due to luck and timing but it just seemed like everyone we encountered in those two countries went out of their ways to make us welcome. There was so much to see and experience with every new day. And the food was so incredible, the absolute best ever. There is a Vietnamese restaurant in our town of Eagle River and we order Pho from there
often because it tastes so good and in memory of this trip.