Siem Reap and the Angkor Temples
New Years, 2010
In Siem Reap we stayed at the Kool Hotel, a small hotel located about 10 minutes by Tuk-Tuk to Pub Street, which is the main street in town (restaurants, food stalls, the day and night markets all within a couple of blocks). I thought the hotel was great, they organized all of our trips to the temples (private car and Tuk-Tuk) as well as the car to get us to the Thai-Cambodian border when we left. Of course our room was clean, they had free Internet access and a pool (which I used every evening). The only draw backs were that there were some dogs which barked the entire first night, which made sleeping a challenge, and their breakfasts were a little unorganized some days.
On our first full day, started they day of with a 4:30am wakeup call so that we could go see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. The sunrise wasn't as impressive as we were expecting, but being there so early allowed us to explore without many other people to get in the way. At about 9am we went back to the hotel for breakfast. Fed and caffeinated, we then took a car to Banteay Srey and Kbai Spean since they are the temples which are the farthest out of town, 37km and 50km respectively. The pictures of the countryside are from the car ride on the way out. Kbai Spean is not really a temple but carvings in a stream bed made by hermits about a 1.5k hike uphill into the jungle. Banteay Srey is a very picturesque temple, well preserved with incredibly detailed carvings.
On the second day we did the "Big Loop." We started out relatively early (after breakfast) and hit Angkor Thom (the biggest), Preah Khan and Ta Prohm before stopping for lunch. After lunch we hit Pre Rup (views from the top were great) and Banteay Kdei.
On the last day we got up relatively late and spent the morning at Angkor Wat and the afternoon just hanging around in the town and shopping at the market.
Of course every evening we went into town and wandered the market (picked up some cool opium pipes) and eat dinner (amok chicken, curry, pumpkin soup, spring rolls, etc.). We never did get the chance to try the Fish Foot Massage which you can read about in the last picture.
