theOven

After a night at KL airport (actually got 6 hours sleep) I was on another AirAsia flight heading for Siem Reap, Cambodia. As my holiday had been located around beaches until then I didn’t know what to expect from the next stage of my travel. Siem Reap is 9km outside the city (if you can call it that) and is basically in the middle of rice fields.

The Airport is this little wooden hut and entering the main entrance hall was like entering a library. It was so quiet and grand, and no one runs or says a word, which is a bit wired for a International Airport. You have to pay the immigration 20 US$ on arrival to get a 1 month visa to Cambodia before you can go to the passport control. We all lined up in a queue when people in military uniforms checked our passports and wanted two extra dollars if you didn’t have a passport photo. In the que I talked to 2 British girls (Helen & Susie) and a German girl (Annika), which told me that Line’s lonely planet book was wrong and that there was ATMs in Cambodia.

Siem Reap city it’s self is tiny and it’s all centralised around 4 and 5 stars hotels, backpacker guesthouses and Pub Street which is the tourist’s playgrounds. I had pre-booked a guesthouse online, but it turned out that they were full even if the internet site told me they had available rooms. I quickly found another guesthouse, Villa Coconut Lodge Guesthouse (they are everywhere) and got a twinroom for 9 US$ which was a bit expensive (single rooms do not exist). After getting my baggage in my room, I went for a walk to see the city and meet the girls from the airport. We decided to meet up and have dinner later that night. Turns out that the two English girls (from Newcastle) had similar educational background as me (film and video studies). But they were travelling for a year and was in no hurry to get into the industry, as I am.

By the way; first time you walk in the streets of Siem Reap you might feel bad for all the kids that comes up to you and tells you that they are hungry or that they need money for milk, but I promise you that that will pass in an instant after spending more than a night there. The truth is that if you buy or give these kids anything you are not helping, but making thing worse. The kids are sent on the street to beg, because it’s very very beneficial for the parents. Whilst a government employed person in Cambodia earn about 20US dollar a month, can these kids get approx. 150 US$ and more by begging, so they are by no means hungry or poor, just good actors/actresses. That fact that they get so much money, keeps them away from school because they hang out outside the pubs and restaurants every night until 5 in the morning. Cambodia really needs more educated people to run the country after Pol Pot killed all academicians under the revolution in the 70’s. So do not buy anything from or give money to the kids in Cambodia. It’s not helping them.

Well back to my story. After hanging out with the airport girls the first night, the Irish girls from Perhentian (Aisling, Emma, Amy, Vicky and Ally) arrived the second night. We had some problems finding each other because I only had two of the girls Malay phone numbers, but none of them worked in Cambodia. I finally found them at the guesthouse I originally booked at, as I knew they had done the same as I and tried to book online.

The day after I moved in with Aisling, Vicky and Ally at the Golden Temple Villa Guesthouse, as this was cheaper for us all…we thought. It ended only being cheaper for me, but for the girls it was the same. The guy in the reception was more interesting in getting my money that giving good service, so I ended up paying on top of what the girls was already paying, which was 4 US$ each.

On the second day at the temples I meet Paul from Canada, he seemed like a cool guy and he joined us for dinner that night and kept hanging out with us after that. It was good having another guy there even if it was only for a while, but I didn’t get his email address, so I hope he reads this and puts it in a comment.

I left Siem Reap after 3 days of temple watching, and felt a bit templed out, but I’ll tell you more about that in my blog on Angkor Wat and the temples.