Cambodia: Siem Reap
After Phnom Penh, our next stop on our southeast Asia backpacking trip with Contiki is Siem Reap.
Siem Reap is the capital of Cambodia and home to one of the most beautiful ancient master pieces of the world – the Angkor Wat.
Transportation
We fly 45 minutes from Phnom Penh to Cambodia. This flight is included in the Contiki package.
I don’t remember the airline, but there was an issue with my seat where it would lean back on its own. When we were doing the take-off and landing, I wasn’t sitting straight in an upright position, which if I think about it now, is probably very dangerous and could have given me whiplash.
Accommodations
Frangipani Hotel
This is the last hotel we are staying in for our trip. Like all the other hotels included in Contiki, it is to a similar standard. All of our rooms are in an older wing of the hotel. Our room distinctively has a yellow bathroom and a bath tub instead of a bath floor.
The hotel has a really nice pool area where drinks at the bar are again, BOGO at $4 USD a cocktail. It is nice to lounge around the pool after 5 pm because anything before that is way too hot. Mosquitos come out around 8 pm though.
Julianna and I have our last dinner in this hotel because it is too hot for us to go out and find a restaurant. The service in this hotel’s dining room is quite chaotic. We are served a plate of french fries, which is part of Julianna’s order so we eat it. After we eat it, we realize there is another girl who ordered just french fries outside from the patio and never received them. I’m pretty sure the servers got confused and gave us her french fries and we ate them all. Not our fault, though.
The dinner is average, but their breakfast buffet is the best out of all the ones we had in Contiki. They have a wide variety of noodles and congees on top of western breakfast choices.
Things to do
Khmer Kitchen Restaurant
This restaurant is probably the only – yes, only – restaurant where I thought the food tasted above average. The restaurant is 2 floors with open windows (er, no windows) and lots of fans trying to cool guests down. Tables had a cute picnic pattern tablecloth.
We order the Khmer curry – a Cambodian style yellow curry that is delicious. It has a sweet coconut flavour, similar to Thai curry. Other things we ordered were battered fish that are lightly fried, spring rolls and french fries (because I missed french fries).
Angkor Night Market + Pub Street
Angkor Night Market is the largest and oldest night market in Siem Reap. A specific segment of it is called “Pub Street” and is lined with restaurants and bars.
At this point in the trip, all the night markets blend together in terms of what they sell. But the Angkor Night Market is large and exciting – buzzing with people and street vendors.
There are people selling scorpions on a stick, or selling the chance to take a photo of you wearing the strapped table of scorpions. After eating a spider in Phnom Penh, I pass on this experience.
There are foreigners passing out flyers to a bar on a second floor called YOLO bar. We go because they offer us free shots but the stairs to get to the second floor is probably the most narrow, scariest set of stairs I have ever gone up. The bar is dark inside and everything is lit up in neon. Like promised, we take our free shots and leave because it was only 8 pm and the place was empty except for a bunch of guys.
Red Piano
Red Piano is a restaurant situated on the corner of Pub Street. We go there for dinner and share a pizza that is not very good. I think they are more well-known for burgers.
The restaurant has an interesting drink called the Tomb Raider Cocktail – every 10th sold is free and every 500th sold wins you the cocktail, a T-Shirt and $100 in cash.
Three of us order this and Julianna’s drink is one of the every 10th sold! They ring a siren and we are all very excited. We didn’t win $100 though.
If you’re wondering why this drink is dedicated to Angelina Jolie and Tomb Raiders, continue to read about our temple hopping adventure below.
Temple hopping
The next morning our Contiki took us on a temple hopping adventure for half of the day. One thing about Cambodia is that there are a hella lot temples. Basically, every king was like “I am going to build myself a temple” and so there are tons of them scattered around the country.
The three temples we are visiting are: the Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm.
Angkor Wat
This is THE place to go to if you are traveling to Siem Reap. It is one of the largest religious monuments in the world and parts of it is being maintained under reconstruction.
Watching the sunrise
As part of the Contiki package, we wake up at 4 am (YES 4 AM) and travel in the dark to get our tourist pass to get into the Angkor Wat so we can catch the sunrise.
We are not the only ones with this plan. There are so many people waiting outside of the temple by this lake it is crazy. Photographers and tourists huddling for over an hour as we wait for the sun to rise and highlight the majestic architecture.
All my photos turned out pretty shitty, but here you can see what this scene looks like in real life:
And this is what our tour guide is able to capture over the many many times he lead a group to see the sunrise:
The sun rises and we go inside the Angkor Wat. It is beautiful and grand and all the things I thought it would be. The place is also more crowded than you can imagine but because the temple is so big, you find lots of open spaces for photos without any trouble.
There are monkeys loitering around the outside of Angkor Wat and lots of street vendors and people trying to sell you coffee and breakfast. They call themselves celebrity names to help you remember who they are and which stall they work at (ex. “You want some coffee? I’m Harry Potter!”).
Angkor Thom
The Angkor Thom is the next temple we go to as part of the tour. Our tour guide tells us that the king who made this temple was lazy and decided to steal parts of deceased kings’ temples to make his. (lol I would do this).
The Angkor Thom is famous for having face statues, which are very cool to see.
Ta Prohm
Ta Prohm is famous for being the temple Tomb Raider is filmed at, hence why the Red Piano had a special drink featuring this film.
Even though I literally chose this Contiki trip because I wanted to see the Angkor Wat, I liked touring Ta Prohm the most out of the three temples. Unlike Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm is a temple that is overgrown by nature. This means trees are growing on top of the structures and there is greenery just spreading over the ruins. It is a lot cooler to see and explore.
Quad biking
There is an option go to quad biking for an additional $36 USD. But Julianna and I are so tired from the sunrise wake-up and all the temple walking that we decide not to do it. I heard from our Contiki group that it was fun and very dusty.
Final thoughts
I came to Cambodia to see the Angkor Wat and I got all that and more. This part of the Contiki trip definitely felt worth it for me because of all the information I received from the guide. It is definitely a top tourist place and can get very confusing and chaotic if you travel alone there.
As a city, Siem Reap felt very exciting and exotic. I think it is a good mix of shopping and dining and culture because of all the temples. Phnom Penh was kind of depressing honestly, likely because of the historic activities we did and how we learned about genocide. Siem Reap was fun and it was our last stop with our Contiki friends.
After our 2 days in Siem Reap, Julianna and I flew home back to Vancouver. The journey home was the worst experience I’ve ever had and it was my own fault. I’ll write more about this in my last trip recap, which will include my travel montage video!
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