You certainly know you've entered a country which has seen tough times when you cross the border into Cambodia from Thailand. You can visibly see the differences, straight away. Smoothly tarmaced roads give way to dusty roads with potholes and brick houses suddenly disappear and wooded houses built upon stilts pop up amongst the trees which line the roads. The scenery though is breathtaking, it almost looks surreal and more like a movie set built in Hollywood. We decided on this trip to Cambodia that we'd only go to Siem Reap, we are going to save the rest of the country for when we return to visit Vietnam, seeing as we cancelled that part of our trip due to the typhoons.
Siem Reap is a great little town, full of fabulous restaurants, wonderful markets (which all pretty much sell the same thing) and the main road is a dusty bumpy pot-holed mess. Everyday you see at least 5 or so people who have had limbs blown off due to landmines and UXO's and there are quite a lot of beggars on the streets too. Nonetheless, we found Siem Reap to be a charming wee town, full of genuinely kind people. I'd go as far to say, it is one of my favourite places we've visited on our trip so far...
The temples of Angkor are stunning and everyone should try and see them. We spent a day doing the 'small circuit' and visited the main sights, which included the immense and beautiful Angkor Wat, Bayon with it's 216 faces and eerie Ta Prohm which is getting swallowed up and overtaken by massive tree roots (It was also the place where Tomb Raider was filmed).
While we were in Cambodia we really wanted to visit one of the numerous orphanages and take some supplies which we had bought in large quantities (toothbrushes, toothpaste, shoes, washing powder and rice). One morning we were trying to figure where to take them and we met a fellow guest from our guesthouse (Anthony, whom was also from Hamilton) who had been in Cambodia for a few months trying to set up and sort out an orphanage. He invited us to join him on a visit to his orphanage, so we jumped at the opportunity and what an amazing experience it was.
32 children aged from less than 1 to 17 years of age lived at the orphange. They were so pleased to see us and happily practiced their english on us and eagerly posed for photos. At first Mia was a little intimidated by them, but it didn't take long until Dallas started acting the clown and had all the kids laughing... These kids were just amazing and I really wished we could have done more for them.
Alain's Khmer BBQ, no it didn't consist of dog, cat, rat or worm, but it did have snake, crocodile and two other mystery meats.
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