It’s been a fast and furious few days in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Our primary mode of transport here has been by tuk tuk. Our driver, Mr. Seng, picked us up from the airport, took us on two full outings to the temples in the Angkor complex, and recently dropped us off at the airport.
We saw lots of tourists renting their own scooters or even riding regular bicycles around. They are either braver or stupider than we are, perhaps both, because the traffic “patterns” involved left turners (they drive on the right so left turns are the hard turns) slowly just starting to turn in front of flowing traffic in order to get them to slow down so they could turn. It’s one of those systems that works because the people in it know what to expect and react accordingly. Mixing tourist drivers in can only cause problems.
The main reason people come to Siem Reap is to go to the temples of Angkor. The temples are amazing and do not fail to live up to the hype. We spent almost 6 hours on Tuesday and 5 more on Wednesday and I am still digesting how much we saw. I can’t begin to process how people built such amazing structures before modern technology and in the sweltering climate of Cambodia. As you might expect, we have zillions of pictures and want to share lots of them on the blog, but we have to resize each one to fit it on the blog so I’m including a few snaps now and will post more later.
Siem Reap itself is almost one giant market. When we first arrived at our hotel, our host, Bale, showed us a map of town and started circling the night markets. When he got done there was almost no uncircled map left. Luckily, there are also lots of bars with $.50 drafts of Angkor beer. A nice generic refreshing lager, perfect for a couple of hard working tourists after a long day of touring.
Okay, I need to get some more food before the flight to Da Nang, Vietnam, our next stop. More to come…
