Part 2: Indochina Travel- Siem Reap, Cambodia

This is the continuation of our Indochina adventure to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Click this link if you've missed the first part of our travel to Bangkok and Ayutthaya, Thailand.


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An overland cross-board adventure thru bus transfer is the cheapest and most popular option for travelers coming from Thailand or Vietnam to get to Cambodia. We left Bangkok early Monday morning and Tita Am hired a taxi using grab-a-taxi app to take us to the Transpo Ltd Co Terminal in Mo Chit. 

 Unfortunately, the direct bus schedules to Siem Reap were already fully booked on our scheduled trip and so our 2^nd option is to take the Bangkok-Poipet-Siem Reap enroute. This route is quite stressful because it requires two bus transfers after exiting the Thailand immigration and dealing with scams along the way. Fare for this trip costs 600baht. We were able to catch the exact 7am departure and the travel time from Bangkok to Aranyaprathet, (the last City of Thailand before crossing the border of Cambodia) is around 5-6 hours.

At Aranyaprathet, the instruction said that we need to wait for our Cambodian guide to lead us to the exchanged bus in Poipet.  Our Cambodian guide suspiciously tried to trick us by offering a scam taxi to Siem Reap.  Ofcourse, we took the bus since we paid for this whole trip anyway. After passing the immigration of Cambodia, we took a short walk towards the free bus shuttle to Poipet Tourist International Terminal [about 10minutes away from the border] where we met the Cambodian guide and ushered us to our exchanged bus going to Siem Reap for another 2-3 hours of travel. The exchanged bus is owned by a private Cambodian bus company called Air Aran and the bus, although  air-conditioned, is old with dirty chairs & curtain.

As we continue with our travel, we noticed a great difference between Thailand and Cambodia in terms of their respective economic conditions. Beggars can be seen everywhere just right after passing the Cambodian arch. Surprisingly, even the beggars can speak English quite good even without proper English education.

Welcome to Cambodia!!

And so we arrived in the City proper of Siem Reap at around 5:30pm. The Air Aran bus strangely dropped us at the entrance of a hotel where many tuktuk are in line to get a passenger. We took the first tuktuk we saw and eventually hired him for our Angkor wat tour the following day due to his humor & fluency in English --which turned out to be the worst decision we have ever made (story later in this post). A group of Western tourists who we rode the bus with refused to avail the tuktuk service offered by a tall Cambodian guy in the hotel.  Suddenly, the guy became violent and raised his middle finger to them. Wow! What a nice welcome greeting for all of us. Right from there, we had a first bad impression of Khmer people.

Our tuktuk driver didn’t charge us for taking us in our hotel accommodation since we hired him for our Angkor Wat tour( we thought it was sweet).
 We stayed in King Rock Boutique Hotel in our 3days & 3 nights in Siem Reap booked via our trusted hotel website, agoda. This hotel exceeds our expectation because for only Php2,100.00 per night, we experienced a 5 star amenities and service.

They also clean our room , change our towels, refill our toiletries every single day and our room is also equipped with Ironing facility. Very impressive! Check out our room:

Tadahhhh!!

We have a king size bed with super comfy linen. The floor is made of pure wood

It also has a living area with coffee maker, refrigerator and cabled tv. 

Our bathroom is huge with hot & cold shower, blow dryer and

 a very Asian bath tub

We also have a veranda-my most favorite part of the room. We always hang out here while sipping our coffee in the morning or beer at night. We prefer to stay here during our free time than to be in a noisy bar in the Pubstreet. Although it doesn't have an overlooking stunning beach or City view, it is still the coziest part of our room for me

Btw, the hotel is just a walking distance from the night market, pubstreet, and is also surrounded by many restaurants, travel agencies & convenience stores. If you're looking for a hotel in Siem Reap, I definitely recommend King Rock Boutique Hotel. I swear you will get more than of what you pay for. 

And so after we'd settled our stuff in our lovely room, my sweet boyfriend treated me with a nice dinner for our exact 3rd year anniversary which was mostly spent in our long bus travel. King Rock Boutique Hotel offers free one-way transfer to your destination around the City proper.
 The hotel's in-house driver brought us to Mahob Khmer Cuisine. The restaurant has the most romantic ambience with beautiful garden and candle light table set up. 

Happy Anniversary my love!

We both ordered Khmer Chicken Curry 

and Fishball with young melon soup

We also went to The Pubstreet and bought some scarfs. For some weird reason, it was freezing cold the day we left Thailand to Cambodia and the cool weather lasted for 2 days-- which was a perfect weather to explore the Angkor Wat. I wasn't able to enjoy shopping though because the store vendors (and even the tuktuk drivers) are too pushy and aggressive. I even encountered a lady vendor who became incredibly rude to me when I refused to buy in her store which kind of made me sad because I thought that the Khmer people are tourist-friendly. Ofcourse, I do not want to generalize... we met some nice Khmer people as well. We may just have been unlucky to have encountered the unpleasant Khmer people in our trip.

The Pubstreet

The next day, we woke up early for our Angkor wat tour. Our tuktuk driver picked us up at around 8am. We went to 5 temples-- the famed angkor wat, bayon temple, uncle tomb and 2 more small temples which we couldn't recall the names of those temples.. You know..It happens all the time... Memory gap!! 

 King Rock Boutique Hotel literally serves big, yummy breakfast!!

Our 1 day pass to Angkor Wat for $20 each.

Our expensive Tuktuk-ride. hehe

Entrance to Angkor Wat

detailed stone sculptures.

 Umarteee ka?!

 Beautiful, tall trees around the temples

Lake at the Angkor Wat full of water lilies

Orangey-colored soil all over Cambodia.. I wonder why

For lunch, our driver brought us to this eatery

It is said that Angelina Jolie ate at this eatery while filming Tomb Raider. I could say that among the 3 countries, the Khmer cuisine is the one we like the most. Their cuisine is a mix of Thai and Vietnamese cuisines but the herbs and spices they mix in their food is not too strong which makes it tastes more balance. They also put a lot of veggies in their meal, too.

 Jan ordered Chicken Loklak

and I ordered Chicken Amok.

And then we continued with our tour after the heavy and sumptuous lunch to these temples

Our tour already ended at 2pm. Our tuktuk driver said that he's going to pick us up again for sunrise viewing in the lake at 4pm.
Sunrise at 4pm?! We decided not to go there anymore since it seems uninteresting. At the end, we got scammed by our tuktuk driver by charging us 4 times the price of what a day-tour tuktuk service should be without any choice.

To save yourself from this unfortunate event [like we did].. we highly encourage you to NEVER EVER HIRE AN OUTSIDE TUKTUK DRIVER for your Angkor wat tour. It is best to book your tour with your hotel. They may charge a handling fee for your tour but they wont charge you as much as we paid with the outside tuktuk driver. For $80 half day tuktuk and $40 entrance fee.. that's waaayyy too much! We compared the tour from our hotel and the hotel only quoted us $23. Can you imagine that? Oh well .. it was indeed a lesson learned to us. Never trust a stranger immediately.

Anyway..

Our 3rd and last day in Siem reap was a free day. We decided not to avail a second day tour in Angkor Wat anymore due to our disappointment with our tuktuk experience and all the temples (despite its number) seem to look just the same.  Unless you want to see the every single details of more than 200 temples of Angkor wat, a 1 day tour is pretty much enough to wander and admire the stunning beauty of Angkor Wat. We just went out for lunch and dinner, and a little shopping at the night market. We also bought our bus tickets to Ho Chin mihn in advance from a travel agency near our hotel called Virak Buntham Express Tour & Travel.

They offer VIP 18 bus seater to Ho Chi Mihn for Php1800 which includes free pick up from your hotel. Availing a bus transfer from a travel agency was a good decision.. a lot more convenient and safer! Again, We already learned our lesson! 

Our VIP Bus tickets to Ho Chi Mihn

We woke up early the next day for our 7:30am pick up.. had our last breakfast in King Rock's restaurant and prepared ourselves for another 10 long hrs of bus travel to Ho Chi Mihn. Overall, eventhough we had a Love-Hate first impression of Cambodia, I am so happy to finally had the chance to see the Angkor wat.. One more item ticked off in my bucket list! Yey!

The VIP 18-seater bus.

On our way to HCM with our haggard faces. hehe

Stay tuned for the continuation of our

Indochina travel to Ho Chi Mihn, Vietnam

Always,

Rica ♡