Siem Reap

An early morning ferry and bus brought us to the Laos-Cambodia land border where we went through the immigration procedures. It was a Saturday and this apparently meant that you had to pay a $2 fee either side due to the staff overtime rate. This is of course a complete lie, but just to make our lives easier we just agreed to pay the fee and were processed fairly quickly. Some people were refusing to pay the fee and apparently were eventually let through after waiting. You then walk between the Laos and Cambodian border before you are granted your entry visa. The next leg of the journey involved a 5hour minibus journey towards Siem Reap. I can honestly say I genuinely feared for our lives due to the way our driver was navigating the roads. Traffic laws don’t seem to abided by here. When we arrived in the city it was after dark. Our tour company however did provide a free tuktuk to our accomodation. 

We originally intended to stay only three nights but ended up extending our stay by  two extra nights. The hostel we stayed in was called Siem Reap Chilled Backpackers. We got up to a lot of activities in this fun and bustling city. We arrived at a weekend which meant going to watch the Six Nations Rugby at a sports bar in town. As the matches were played live, they were on very late in our time zone. Once we had recovered from our two late nights we decided to do something more productive and cultural. The Artisan Museum is definitely worth scouting out. You do not need to be an art connoisseur to appreciate the incredible craftsmanship. It is free entry and you can wander through the active workshops observing artists working with many different mediums. We also attended the National Museum to learn more about the history of Siem Reap. Mostly we saw a lot of Buddhas, Nagas and statues of Vishnu. It did however get us excited for visiting world famous temple Angkor Wat.

Mark had a contact with a local man called Pagma who is founder of a school based in the surrounding countryside near Siem Reap. We spent a full day touring with Pagma as he showed us his schools, as well as the floating village. He also took Luke and I into the Panorama Museum, which told the history of the Angkor area and the temples within in. The huge and incredibly life-like panoramic painting was totally worth the visit. Pagma is a truly fascinating man. Although he lives a modest life, he dreams of Cambodian children acquiring a good education and speaking English. Pagma is from a huge family and was only able to attend some of his own formal education when a child. He then became a monk for several years but continued to dream about learning English and furthering his education. He did just that when he left the monkhood and worked hard to finish both his high school and university educations. He learnt to speak English as an adult, meaning it was very difficult for him. This struggle is something he wishes to prevent the children from having to go through. Pagma believes that if a child is able to learn English, this will open up a much wider world of opportunities. 

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First we visited the monastery he lived in when he was a practising monk. Here he showed us elaborate traditional Chinese burial tombs. This contrasts from the Cambodian Buddhist method, who cremate their dead. He told us the story of Buddha from large wall murals. Afterwards we went to his first school, where we met his wife and had lunch. At the school, there were three classrooms and a small yard. Each classroom sits roughly 20-22 children. There are 9 teachers employed, who work one or two of the three shifts per day. Children can come twice a week and attend either an early morning class, an afternoon class or an evening class. We spent around an hour or so with a class playing games. The ages of the children in our class ranged from 10-14years old. All the children we met were happy and smiley. Every child was absolutely thrilled to be in school, something I definitely could not confidently say about the kids back in Britain! After saying goodbye we drove to the floating village, which was not actually floating at this time of year. When in wet season the river levels rise 8-10feet, therefore all the houses are elevated by high wooden stilts. Along the way we visited a small classroom of 4-7year olds, who were based under Pagma’s wife’s family home. These kids were absolutely adorable and again super happy to see us and play games. Mostly this involved counting games and lots of high fives! Our final destination of our day tour was to watch the sunset on Tonle Sap Lake. After a short wait, we were ferried out to a floating restaurant. I was shocked to find a large cage with several small crocodiles in it, unfortunately I suspect destined for the menu! Watching the sun set over a hazy horizon ended our day. 

After such a busy day you would think we would relax the following day. Wrong! There are many temples worthy of visiting within the Angkor area, the most famous being Angkor Wat. It is recommended to visit Angkor Wat for sunrise. This meant getting up at around 4.30am and getting a tuktuk to the site. Very kindly, Pagma had organised his cousin to take us there for sunrise. We had bought our tickets the day before, but stupidly not checked the date that had been printed on the ticket. To our absolute dismay when we arrived at the gateway where our tickets were checked by officials, we were told our entry pass had expired. This then led to frantic explanation that we had not been to the temples at all yet and that there had been a mistake as we had bought the tickets the day before. The officials checked our phones to ensure our story was truthful and sent us back to the tickets office where the problem was rectified. Thankfully we did make it back in time for sunrise within the grounds of Angkor Wat. Unfortunately it was an anti-climatic sight due to it being a very cloudy morning. We entered the temple at around 6.15am and explored the impressive construction in our own time. Angkor Wat is probably the most famous temple in the world and is considered one of the seven wonders of the world. It was built in honour of the Hindu god, Vishnu. It was constructed in the early 12th century by King Suryavarman II in the height of the great Khmer Empire. It is said to still be the largest religious monument in the world today. Originally it was dedicated to a Hindu god, but became a Buddhist temple in the 14th century. This temple is different also from the others in this area as it faces west instead of the traditional east. This is thought to be because of the dedication to Vishnu, rather than Shiva (another Hindu god) or indeed to a Cambodian ruler. I won’t bore you with any more history than that, because it is really extensive. All I really retained other than the above, was my experience of this place. All I can say is it really does live up to the expectations. It is hard to believe this vast monument was literally carved out of stone by thousands of hands. Some of the elaborate stonework has faded and eroded with age but others have been preserved such as the carved wall mural “Churning of the Ocean of Milk”. You need to google the story behind this because honestly I don’t think I can do it justice. It looks like demons and gods having a massive tug of war. It is of course more complex than that but that’s as simply as I can explain it. After finishing our exploration here, we headed to another two temples nearby. The first was Angkor Thom, also known as Bayon. This temple is one of many faces, quite literally. Originally there were 54 towers with each having 4 carved faces. This place was really cool but massively overcrowded. The second was Baphuon, also known as “baboon” temple. We did indeed see some baboons whilst here, though you need to be careful as they aren’t the most friendly. After climbing lots of steps in all of the temples, the 4.30am start was really wearing away at energy levels. Due to this we called it a day and headed back to the city to get a late breakfast. 

This concluded our stay in this wonderful city. We really liked Siem Reap and are so glad we extended our stay here. The people may drive like madmen but overall everyone we met was so friendly and welcoming. From here we bus it to the capital Phnom Penh.