The trip of my life- Cambodia

South East Asia

Cambodia

I landed first in Bangkok, Thailand and spent 2 days there and off I went to Cambodia. So I booked a bus directly from Bangkok to Siem Reap, where Angor War (largest temple complex in the world) is. Before coming there, I didn’t know much about Cambodia, but for some reason I always wanted to go there and explore the country. I knew it’s a Buddhist country and I really expected something that would inspire me and give me a different view on things. I’m officially a Christian but realistically I’m leaning more towards eastern religions like Buddhism and Daoism. Although all religions have very similar core teachings and want the good for everyone and show you a way to a better life. So I don’t believe in any particular religion, but I try to keep an open mind and explore myself deeper and see what fits me.

Siem Reap by night

Bar street

TIP 1: Never book a direct bus from Bangkok to Siem Reap and don’t book with the hostel/hotel even if the person at the hostel is super-hot! There is also a huge scam at the border of Thailand/Cambodia. Basically they take you to the border, sit you down somewhere and they tell you they will arrange the visa for you. They charge you 50% more than the actual price. To avoid this, you simply walk to the border, do it in 5 min and walk to the other side. If you decide you will do it by yourself, so don’t forget to take the receipt with you, the one that states you payed all the way to Siem Reap…If they take it from you, you will be stranded on the other side (like me). If you have a receipt you will be taken to a bus stop and from there you will continue the journey, if not you will have to pay. They took my receipt and I got stranded on the other side, but got to the bus station and payed a little for a ride to Siem Reap (It was still cheaper than paying 50% more for the visa). I recommend you buy a ticket to the border and then buy another ticket from the border to Siem Reap and you will save a lot of money. I payed around 25 EUR for a direct ticket, if you buy them separately it would be around 10 to 15 EUR.  Going back, it costs around 6 EUR for 2 separate tickets! AT THE BORDER BE CAREFUL OF SOME SCAMS, LIKE EXCHANGING MONEY, BUYING THINGS, …

When taking a bus in Cambodia, don’t expect comfort and don’t expect to sleep, because for some reason they love to blast their music loud, and it’s a type of music only a native could love, but the first couple of videos will make laugh so hard you will be getting a good AB workout! It’s around 6h drive from the border to Siem Reap and like most Cambodia buses, they will leave you outside of the city and make you take a Tuk Tuk (local three-wheeler with the driver that usually doesn’t speak English) for an extra 1, 2$. Finding the place to stay is quite easy, just ask a person who can speak English where is a cheap place and he will usually take you there for his cut. Of course you only stay if the price is right and if it's similar or cheaper than other places. So I stayed in a backpacker area where there are many different hostels and hotels. On the road towards Siem Reap you already notice that it’s much poorer than Thailand. Some roads will not be paved and houses on the side of the road are made from bamboo or some other wood and sometimes raised a couple of feet just in case of flooding. The city of Siem Reap is quite small, the city center is very touristy and pricey as well. Most people there can speak English and it’s easy to find anyone to help you around. Streets are mostly paved in the center and once you go a little outside they are covered with red sand and gravel.

Angor War

TIP: I recommend always buying a SIM card in every country you visit in SE Asia, it will make life much easier and comfortable. I do it so I never have to worry about anything, no matter what problem you have, google will know the solution and not worrying on a trip about anything will make your trip much more enjoyable and focused on the more important things!

Angor War temple is around 6km from the city center and if you rent a bicycle in the city you can get around the temples quite well. Usually most visitors enter the temples around 5, 6 am to see the sunset over the temples, I didn’t because it was a foggy day and there was nothing to see, but I did get there at 6:30. The size of the temple is huge, but the whole temple area is enormous and impossible to cover everything within a day.  Luckily I had a bicycle and strolled around the temples going in and out the whole day. When getting to the main one Angor War you really start to notice how extremely big it is and this one is well maintained as well. Obviously the place is famous when you have local tourist guides that speak all kind of languages (Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, …).  Once you see the main one the others in comparison are nothing special and fell short to my expectations, of course each has their own little specialty and an interesting story. 

 

Angor War and around

After hours of walking and cycling you slowly get a little tired, but luckily there are a couple of small villages next to the ruins where you will find decent food which is slightly overpriced. I would also recommend you to see the temple where “Tomb Rider” the movie was shot or the temple where the trees roots grow all over a wall of a temple. Once again you will be amazed by the power of nature! People working there seems very nice and were willing to chat and communicate so their days would go by faster, it was nice talking with them as well!

At Angor War temples

One of the most important things when I travel are people! For me all these fancy, important places don’t really matter, but people and their hearts will really tell you what a place is like and how life there is. I was really disappointed with the people in Cambodia. Not only do you always have to bargain for every single thing, but you also have to be careful who you talk to, because they might take you somewhere and sell you something. They have separate bus stations for foreigners, special menus and prices in restaurants, people are really cold and like to make fun of foreigners, Tuk tuk’s try to get a lot of money from you, so be careful how much you pay. I would advise you to browse a little earlier and see how much it usually is and what scams they have (if you have a SIM card it takes you 30 min and you will save a lot of money). I met this British couple which got scammed so many times it was really sick and they told me how much they had to pay for certain things and were approached by scammers and payed 10, 15x more than others. Be sure to bargain and fight for a good price, they are counting on you to feel bad about them and they will make sure to use it. Well I did meet some nice locals a little later, but while I was in the tourist places it’s really bad!

I didn’t hangout too much in the city center and I didn’t feel like hanging out with other foreigners too much at the beginning of my trip, mostly because I didn’t want to be a foreigner but I wanted to blend in more with the locals. The next day my ATM card got swollen in the ATM and I had to deal with that, even if it was a little of a hassle I still found it quite interesting and fun to deal with that. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it back the same day but in a week when I was back in Siem Riep.  Luckily I still had my credit card I could withdraw from.

I decided next I will head to Battabang, a city 3h from Siem Riep by bus. I didn’t take a boat which is popular by the tourists since I didn’t want to spend the whole day on a boat doing nothing, so I took the bus and was in battabang by 12h. There are many things you can see the there: like see the bat caves (see thousand bats fly out every day around 6p.m.), take bamboo train, see a couple of temples, explore the city and their markets. I decided I will skip the bats flying out and try to see the bamboo train and explore a couple of temples outside with a bicycle and I also saw a crocodile farm. The bamboo train experience was OK, slightly ruined by locals trying to get 10 instead of 5$ from you, riding in a bamboo train with a dry, lemon mouth Germans and the lady who was driving the bamboo train was really in a hurry. After all, it was still a really nice experience and you get to ride on the train tracks which are really crooked and bouncy, since there is only one train track when people from the other side go you have to dismantle your “train” and then assemble it again later. Really cool J

The bamboon train
Villages around Battambang	Going to see the temples

After the bamboo train I rented a motorcycle and went to see the city a little bit, stumbled on a crocodile farm on the edge of a city where you could see hundreds of crocodiles being fed and them jumping and fighting for food was quite a unique experience. I also liked that the farm wasn’t touristy and you could get the real authentic feeling. Driving to this temple 10 km from the city was an even cooler experience, because on the way you see really local houses and stop in their little home stores where they hang everything out to be seen like underwear. People there were also smiling when they saw me and some kids even waved as I was passing by. Seeing the kids there being raised in such poverty, made me think how lucky I was that I grew up where I was and I always had everything and more, but was too greedy to know realize it at that time! Close to the temples you saw a huge construction of a really wide road, it was being made by Chinese so they could develop the infrastructure (some might say, they built the road where they are planning to have a huge company in order to make it more accessible). Many food carts and small diners were built to serve food for the workers and the views were amazing with rice fields going until the eye could see. The temples themselves were nothing special, but I did meet a group of students there whose English wasn’t so good. One guy told me the story about how hard the conditions in Cambodia are, that even with the bachelor in Electronics it’s almost impossible to find a job or find an employment. The only option is to go to the capital, but the fear of leaving your parents behind is too much. So to fulfill the parents’ wishes he stay in the city and works another job he doesn’t like to satisfy their parents. In Asia there are many stories similar to this one and sometimes more heartbreaking. Family for a lot of Asians is really important and kids make sure their parents are very well off and that they are proud of their kids! Kids in return sacrifice a lot, even their happiness. From my experience I could understand their point of view and being in China I understand why this happens and why family is so important! I love that and one day I want to have a family that is so close as well, however I will want my family to be free and live as it makes them happy. After coming back at night I walked around the city center and enjoyed looking at the locals doing their normal routine. Most of them at chatting in the park, exercising on the machines, typical Chinese square dancing (grandmothers dancing on the square) and eat food from the vendors on the street. Next morning, I took a small stroll around the town and headed to the capital Phnom Penh.

TIP: Always take at least two cards with you, you don’t want to sleep on the street like I did in London!

Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia and in my opinion by far the most developed city, the city center and the suburbia are both paved and like many other capitals are full of tall buildings. You don’t need to look much until you find the Cambodian feeling in the city, like the street markets where everything possible is being sold, local eateries, and small shops. The royal palace and the city center by the river is where most of the tourist spots are. After a little thought I decided to rent a motorcycle without a proper license in hand. I read a lot about not driving with a license in SE Asia and I wanted to take a small risk to see what the real country side has to offer and of course I got a normal city bike. I decided I’ll dress up like the locals, which meant wearing loose pants. T-shirt and a wind proof jacket with a helmet. I actually blended in nicely and all those police officers on the way out of the city didn’t even give me one look. 

Phnom Penh at night

Royal palace in Phnom Penh

Traffic in the capital

It was a little scary riding a small motorcycle on the road with huge trucks and cars driving like crazy. After an hour of driving you get used to the system and the way things are done on the road. I road all the way down south to the beach Krong Kampot where I had my early dinner. I love the fruit Durian and the city Kampot has a huge Durian statue, which was the coolest thing ever. There were some really nice beaches on both side of the river, but I was in a hurry to get so Sihanouk which was another 100km west. Little did I know that road was 90 km going up on the hills and since my city motorcycle wasn’t meant to go more than 150km, I decided this had to be done. Going up the hills and looking at locals relaxing by the road and chatting, rice fields on one side and hills on the other. Simply stunning and enjoyed every moment of it…until dark came and my head light stopped working! Of course it wasn’t helping to know that I didn’t have any place reserved. What did I do? I stopped and rested my motorcycle, downloaded the flashlight APP on the phone and when it downloaded I drove with one hand and held the phone with the other! Luckily I somehow found this little town where a local helped me find a place to stay, of course it was the most expensive place I stayed in, but It was a place to stay! As always I love a little challenge and when you succeed you feel like on top of the world! FINDING YOUR OWN WAY OUT OF TROUBLE IS THE MOST REWARDING!

Temple on the road
Rice fields

Then next day I picked up some breakfast at the local store (this means a place where there are 50 things on display and it’s by the road) and went to this beautiful beach that was completely deserted! Only a couple of more miles and I reached Sihanouk where I chilled for the whole day. The small town is quite touristy with many beaches and tours to the close islands. I decided not to go to an island since I’m not a big buff of beautiful beaches, resting for a long time and spending 40 EUR on a return boat ticket, for that much money I can get a much better deal in other countries. It definitely payed off, because I found this little beach that was a backpacker’s place that was completely chilled, 3EUR a night and I spend the majority of the afternoon drinking beer by the beach and laying in a hammock reading a book, just what I needed after a long drive with the motorcycle! The next day I started early and did 250km before 2pm and had the whole day in the capital. I have to say that this motorcycle experience was the best thing i did. Not only because you can go and do whatever you want, but more importantly it gives you freedom to roam to places where there are no tourists and communicate with locals, get to know how they are like, what places the recommend and let you be shocked by all the amazing places are out there without us even knowing! It might have been only 3 days, but it made me realize that I have to get a motorcycle license, get a bike and do many more tours in my life! After spending a relaxing afternoon going around town talking to random strangers and meeting a bunch of really nice people I decided to book a night bus to Siem Reap so I could get back my bank card that the ATM swallowed and of course after an hour or so I got my card and got out of Cambodia as soon as I could!

Markets in the capital	On the road again
Kids I met	Capital

I decided I’ll visit three Buddhist countries in SE Asia (Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar) first and to see how different things are. For some reason I knew Cambodia most and it was a long time wish to one-day travel in Cambodia. Damme was I wrong, I came there hoping to be stunned by the beautiful places, genuine people, new interesting religion and kindness, instead I got harassed by almost everyone there (I guess they saw me as an ATM on legs, don’t get me wrong I love to bargain but this was just way above that), got sent to special foreign bus stations to take more expensive transportation, had separate menus, food was not that good and I didn’t even smell a hit of people abiding by the Buddhism principles. However, once I went alone with a motorcycle I met more locals and went to not so touristy places where things changed for better and I saw people helping each other and some even approach me. Cambodia left me with a bad after taste, now let’s see how Thailand and Myanmar do?!

TIP: I do recommend to do some research on scams and how much certain things should cost before coming to Cambodia. You should not be worried about your safety, but again don’t show off. If you are looking for a true experience, I would tell you to either go to the South or I heard that East side is also a very good option. I heard from many people that Laos is also I country everyone should visit!

Next stop is Thailand