What? No Cambodia topic?
People of Cambodia are amazingly kind, think Thailand kind.
Also incredibly open about their history of genocide. 2M people murdered by Pol Pot so everyone was directly afffected.
Just wrapped this leg of the trip so I’ll post pictures and color commentary. We also went to Vietnam so let’s start with a map
While there are things to see in Phenom Phen it’s not a great place according to those that have been.
It’s on my list of countries to visit in Southeast Asia or Asia in general.
I’ve already been to Japan (about to be there for my 10th time), the Philippines (it’s where my wife and newborn currently live), Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Brunei (just visited), and currently in Indonesia.
We flew into Siem Reap Cambodia from Singapore. I’ll tell you that flight from Los Angeles to Singapore is 17 1/2 hours, it’s quite the endurance test.
The airport in Siem Reap was built by the Chinese who control for the next 55 years. It’s spectacularly modern. It’s about an hour drive outside of town but your hotel can arrange to have you picked up by a car service and it’ll cost you about $30 US.
We stayed in a very nice hotel, which had a nice breakfast and was in a relatively quiet area versus most of the hotels around the main nightlife part town which can be quite noisy. The nice thing about this hotel is there are quite a few restaurants and bars along the road, which are pretty good and well attended by the expats.
Golden Temple Villas
Funny story, well it doesn’t start out funny but my wife had a medical emergency and required a visit from a doctor in the middle of the night for an IV and 2L of fluids. The doctor was awesome. Anyways, after being up all night, I went downstairs to the breakfast buffet by myself, and there were two other ladies having breakfast as well. One of the ladies has drop dead, gorgeous,has an Australian accent. And looks incredibly familiar. I think she’s a gal that my wife does yoga to about three times a week from Phuket Thailand. Looks over and smiles and I ask, are you Nicole? Yes I am. We end up talking over breakfast while my wife is bed ridden. I know she’s gonna be pissed! Very kind person and thanked my wife for following her. She only has 4M+ subscribers LOL
Things to do in Siem Reap.
Eating in Siem Reap
There might be 1000 restaurants in this town it’s incredible. It ranges from street food on little red stools cooked by grandma to fine dinning in a hotel.
There is a main drag called Pub Street which is okay, think Asian Bourbon Street, but it’s lots of bars, music, and the focus of night life in Siem Reap. We walked each night but didn’t hang out.
Places we did like were
Will note that Ankor Wat area is quite a lot of temples. And can take up to 3 days to do
Tagging @R_del_Rosario and @alan_weinberg
Angkor Wat at sunrise is magnificent. We had a hazy sunrise so it was not as magical as I had pictured in my mind but nonetheless beautiful. We spent a good 2.5 hours exploring the site and then headed to Ta Prohm (made famous by the Lara Croft Tomb Raider movie), Bayon and Banteay Srei. After lunch and a nap, we spent the late afternoon and sunset at Angkor Thom. It was a magical but exhausting day. If we had planned it better, i would do the temples over, at least, 2 days.
We hired a guide and driver to take us around and that was well worth the price. The company is called Angkor Doors.
Tuk tuks are easy and plentiful and we used it to go around town except for going to the temples, see above.
The following day, We spent the morning going to Tonle Sap Lake. We got a chance to see a local fishing village, road a boat on the lake, and walked through town. Would I recommend it? Only if you have nothing else to do and have an extra day. I would spend more time in the temples.
We did Angor Wat over 4 days. We were out there with the mad dogs and Englishmen in the noon day sun, because all the tour groups left for lunch. Really do many different temples, and they are quite different. The Indiana Jones temple really transformed when the tours left at 11:50.
Then the pool, and dinner in town.
You’ll want to load WhatsApp on your phone. It’s what everyone uses. Most hotels and restaurants have a WhatsApp number.
For data and cellular you can purchase an esim.
I have T-Mobile and international data is free with 5GB limit and 25 cents minute voice.
I use WhatsApp and Wi-Fi calling to make calls
E-Sim’s are essential when you travel internationally and WhatsApp is also very useful.
Is connectivity better? Otherwise not essential.
I just have a monthly plan with Verizon that is unlimited voice , text and data internationally. Cheaper than the $10/day stuff.
eSIM will just use the local network for the country you are in. In the case of your Verizon plan and my T-Mobile they’ve already contracted with all the national providers to allow our SIM card to connect to their network.
Connectivity in Vietnam and Cambodia is excellent. Viettel provides the comms infrastructure for Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
I have 5G turned off on my phone, mainly because it provides no value at home, and just run LTE but there’s very good 5G in many places.
You’ll have no issues .
Still need WhatsApp loaded to commun with restaurants, guides, etc.
For those that need an esim Airalo is popular and straight forward to use, just install the app and load and go.
We loved Cambodia, and the food was off the charts excellent (even better than Vietnam based on what we had). Love that the cuisine is kind of a bridge (almost literally?) between Vietnam and Thailand.
Great photos! It is a long walk from parking to the temple. It was warm when we were there but we would not have missed it for the world. We also visited some of the other temples in the area. We stayed at the Raffles hotel. Huge rooms. Tiny elevator.
