Siem Reap, Cambodia

We generally get home from the orphanage around 4-4:30pm and we take days off every now and then which means that we make the most of Siem Reap. We’re staying in the Old Market area, which is a great spot to be. There are markets and restaurants everywhere. We go to a market almost every night, and have managed to get our bartering down to a fine art. Things are so much cheaper here than Thailand! A meal is generally less than $2; and a good meal too! We often eat at the markets, or street stalls. All the food is delicious! Tops that we paid $2 for are $1 here. Sunglasses that we paid $3 for are $1 here. Wishing we’d not shopped so much in Thailand! But still happy with all our purchases. Fingers crossed our bags won’t be too heavy for the flights home..

Sticky rice in Bamboo

Another thing we love doing here is eating. Khmer (Cambodian) food is delicious! It’s quite like Thai, but generally less spicy. When we’re at the orphanage they cook for us, and it is always amazingly tasty. We’ve had Lok Lak, which is apparently a traditional Khmer dish. It’s basically beef and onions over lettuce, with rice (almost everything is with rice!) My favourite meal at the orphanage was another dish which I didn’t catch the name of.. It was served with all the food separated, and up to us how much of each we’d put in. There was a few greens, some noodles and an amazing chicken with tangy sauce. Soooo good. On the drive between Siem Reap and the orphanage each day we always pass a billion places selling sticky rice, which comes inside a piece of bamboo! Needless to say we tried that one in a hurry! Kind of weird.. But good. We’ve also been to tons of restaurants; from Indian to Italian to Thai (can’t get away from Thai! Yum yum yum). Belinda took us to a Khmer restaurant for Amok, a traditional curry. It was super rich and creamy, but the flavour was amazing. Tonight Sokhoeun (the Orphanage Director) is taking us to a very Khmer restaurant, where we wouldn’t be able to order without his assistance, because nothing is in English, and no one there will speak English!

We’ve discovered that massages are not nearly as good in Cambodia as they were in Thailand. We’ve had some veeeery interesting experiences here. Each time we go for a massage we pay slightly more, hoping that higher cost = better quality. 

On one of our day’s off we did a ceramics class. I was really looking forward to it, but it was quite a let down. We had about an hour on the pottery wheel, which I’d never used before, and I loved trying it out. The teacher would show us how to start, wait until we had a vague shape, then just take over and finish it. I really enjoyed experimenting with it, but each time I asked how to do something, he’d just do it for me, so I never got to learn anything. And I don’t really feel like I actually made anything! Disappointing. 

A much less disappointing excursion was our quad biking!! We spent ten or fifteen minutes getting some instruction and trying it out on the nearby roads with someone guiding us. Then once we were comfortable we set off into the countryside! We rode around, initially on a highway, then mostly on dirt tracks. Some of them were smooth and even, but most were bumpy, which just made it more fun! We were lucky in that we had a beautiful sunset that night. We stopped a few times for photos, with local kids occasionally jumping in. We also saw a lot of cows. At one point I got stuck being a large group of buffalo who were taking up the whole road, and just a little bit later a baby cow was running along next to me.  

Another afternoon we asked our tuk tuk driver to take us down to the lake. Lake Tonle Sap. We paid a ridiculous amount to hop on a boat for an hour or so. We thought we’d be going around the edge of the lake for a bit, seeing various things. We hopped on the boat and went through a “floating village” which wasn’t actually floating, because it’s the dry season. But still, very cool, with houses up on ten metre stilts. Then our driver took us to a restaurant (which was floating!) and we were forced to sit there for 15 minutes, while our driver apparently had something to eat. Felt like a bit of a tourist trap, like they were gonna keep us there until we ordered something! But we didn’t give in. Eventually we got going and finally made it to the main part of the river, at which point our driver said “Ok, we go back now?”. We thought we’d only just begun but apparently we’d seen everything. Picking up on the fact that we weren’t particularly satisfied he stopped off at the village on the way back and told us we could look around. It’s much different to any other village I’ve ever seen, with everything raised so high above the ground. Overall, it was good but we paid far too much, which makes me unsure if it was worth it..

Today is Saturday, and we’re having a day off from the orphanage. We’re planning on sleeping, getting massages, and going shopping. Tomorrow is our last day at the orphanage & then Monday I fly home!!!

I love Siem Reap, I would definitely come back one day.