Siem Reap

Siem Reap is a cool place with lots of activity.  We weren’t able to try and find a meeting Sunday morning since we arrived at 3 am.  I awoke early at about 6am, in fact I’ve been waking up at that time every morning for some reason.  Danica still wanted to sleep so I adventured out to see what I could see.

The hotel we were at was a ways north from where the main tourism area is and it was quite authentic.  In my stroll I saw no other white people at all.  We are closer to the heart of the town now and plenty of white people are around, say maybe 2 per block.

Anyway, I wandered over to the main street outside the Angkor Daisy Hotel.  There was lots of traffic, cars, trucks, lots of motorbike, bicycles, some people walking.  I just followed the example of the walkers and walked on the edge, assuming the bicycles and motorbikes would go around you, which they did.  I love that, how they drive on motorbikes and bicycles.  It’s so awesome because there is no ego and aggressiveness, they just drive and go around each other (although on my way back I did see a near accident, the only one I’ve seen so far).

Eventually I found a huge market going on. As I said, there were no other white people at all.  None, which I didn’t think of at first but Danica pointed out later that I may have been intruding a bit.  But the people at the market honestly didn’t seem too concerned about me so I just worked my way around and through like everyone else.  I found a place where a couple Cambodians were eating so I pointed at a bowl of noodle stuff and said I’d like some.

He ended up making the other bowl of stuff I didn’t want but oh well.  The meat was a bit fatty and wasn’t totally what I had in mind for breakfast but I didn’t really care, I mean come on, I’m seeing my first glimpse of real Cambodia, I couldn’t care less what I was eating.  Some people around me seemed to enjoy me being there and others just didn’t seem to care, which is cool either way.  I was smiling a ton though because I was so excited to be a part of it, sort of.

I strolled through the market and ended up at the fish area.  It was awful.  There were dead fish lying out for sale all over with flies everywhere and a stench to kill.  On top of that, the ground wet and muddy and grey and squishy and nasty.  Made me want to hurl.

I came back to Angkor Daisy a couple hours later around 8:30 so I could listen to the blaring prayer songs coming from somewhere outside the hotel window.  It really did something for me and brought peace… uh, actually it was pretty annoying, but cool since it’s authentic Cambodia.

We packed up our stuff and decided to make our way closer to downtown, a district called Psar Chaa.  I wanted Danica to experience the market so we walked back through it and tried to get to the main road that goes to Psar Chaa.  We couldn’t find it and got pretty disoriented.  We started asking some moto drivers if they could take us to Psar Chaa or to Family Guesthouse, the place we wanted to check out via Lonely Planet, but they had no idea where that was and we’d say downtown, no response.  They just had no clue. 

I bet we had about 7 or 8 moto drivers, along with a tuk-tuk driver around us and none of them had any idea what we were asking.  Haha.  Finally a tuk-tuk drove up and said “I know good English.”  So we asked him if he knew where Family Guesthouse is and he said yes.  For $1 he said he’d take us there.

We arrived at Family and the lady was very very nice and showed us a couple of rooms.  We stayed there last night and will again tonight.  Tomorrow we start for Phnom Penh on an air-con bus, top front again.  But this time I don’t think we’ll end up on a different bus because they said the road from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh “very good, very good road.”  Anyways, the driver asked if he could drive for us some more and take us to the Angkor Wat temples or something.

We said maybe so he left his card with the owner of Family Guesthouse.  We did actually use him today to go to Angkor Wat, $8 for all day.  We gave him $1 tip though.

Well, I need to walk outside and meet Danica at the Angkor What?, a place right next door here.  But my next blog will be about Tonle Sap, which we decided to do out of the blue yesterday after getting our new $5 a night rooms.  Tonle Sap is the greatest place ever.  It beats our adventure of the night before although it may not make for as good a story.  Tonle Sap is just awesome and incredible and we both expressed desires to live there.  By my praise, you’d probably think it a paradise.  Haha, far from it but hopefully when I get the pictures up, they will do it some justice.