When we landed I was immediately in love with this little city in Cambodia. The airport is extremely small and from the outside looks more like a buddhist temple than an airport. I didn’t mind paying $25 dollars for the landing visa, after all it was $140 for the privilege to enter China.
When we got to Motherhome guesthouse, I found that we had pretty much gotten a palace for $18 dollars a night. They had free wireless (EXTREMELY SLOW), breakfast included, and a wonderfully kind staff that all knew English. With the exception of the slow internet I really enjoyed my time there. They even have a restaurant attached to the guest home where occupants get free breakfast. If you are too lazy to go out they serve lunch and dinner as well. We were able to have a feast for only $9 USD and the food was good too! I highly recommend their Stir fried noodles mmm mmmm good!
But as we were walking to meet up with our friends we ran into the bad part of Siem Reap. It seems that there are a lot of extremely poor people here. As we were walking two little girls started asking us for money. They would not give up, one was perhaps 7 years old and the other around 10. After they followed us for between 3 and 5 minutes saying “only a dollar, only a dollar to buy a meal" over and over again while crying I gave in. Since I happen to have no joy in my soul I gave them a dollar so that I could be left in peace. We then went to a touristy restaurant and saw the prices. one entree can cost as little as $2.50 at a touristy place! So with the prices for Cambodian natives who knows how long 1 USD will last.
It seems that I got ahead of myself. When you get to the airport here DO NOT exchange your USD into Riel (Cambodian currency). I think this is a scam to get people to buy riel which is pretty useless in Siem Reap. Every single place in Siem Reap takes USD and quotes prices in USD. In fact if you go to any ATM you can only get USD there is no way to get Riel. The only time riel is used is when giving change that is less than a dollar. So unless you are going someplace way off the beaten path don’t exchange your money, just use USD or if you are not from the US go to any atm in the city or at the airport and you will get USD. I can’t even get my head around the economic implications of a large portion of a country using a foreign currency exclusively but there it is. Well, actually exclusively is not exactly true, they will also take Thai Baht over their own currency. Supposedly this all stems from a time when the Riel was made illegal so people actually still believe it is worthless. So it is what it is. Don’t exchange your money for Riel at the airport!
The only reason why anyone ever comes to Siem Reap, other than the extremely cheap prices on food and clothing, are the Temples. We saw a few of them, Angkor Thom, Ta Prahm, Angkor Wat, and Banteay Kdei. I found that the temples were cool looking I guess, but I was expecting a lot more.
Angkor Wat at what we believe is Sunrise, it was too cloudy to tell exactly when the sun came up.
Angkor Waht from the back!
This is either from the Gallery of the Churning of the Milk or from the gallery that depicts the 37 heavens and hells.
but perhaps the coolest picture comes from Ta Prahm
Yeah, that’s a tree growing out of a temple
Without exception at every temple there were little girls trying REALLY hard to sell you stuff. At Angkor Thom a little girl followed us for 10 minutes trying to get us to buy 5 bracelets for a $1. She finally gave up when she found some other tourists to latch onto. it got pretty old by the time we got to Angkor Wat, but what can you do, the people are poor.
But after seeing all this we found that there wasn’t much to do in Siem Reap. I bought an iPood shirt and some Angkor Wat shirts and then we basically chilled at the hotel.
Perhaps the only truly annoying thing is the passenger service fee. This is my one real gripe about Siem Reap. You have to pay $25 dollars in order to leave the country. This is quite ridiculous in my opinion. But we were forced into it. I will try to post more pictures of the temples and junk later but here is one more I will leave you with hehe.
Alright dudes I gotta get on the plain to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon. Peace out!
Edit:
Internet was so slow in the Cambodia airport that this didn’t actually get to my blog haha. I am now in Ho Chi Minh city posting this entry on Cambodia!
Tags: annoying fees, begging, Cambodia, crying children, gripes, Siem Reap, Temples