After only one week we left Laos to go to Cambodia. Sunday we left Laos, took the crowded bus to Nakhon Ratchasima (people were sitting on plastic stools in the gangway of the bus!), where we stayed one night. Nakon Ratchasima belongs to the region Isaan, which is not touristy. You notice that at once because there are no English translations of road signs or at the bus station. So you have to ask around to find your bus! The bus to the border was very comfortable again and we arrived there in early afternoon. We took a tuk tuk to the actual border. It delivered us reliable to the Thai salespeople who wanted to sell us a visa for “only 1000 Bath”. We dodged them successfully and cleared emigration on the Thai side. After 50m walk over the “Friendship bridge” we arrived in Cambodia, where we got the visa for 20 Dollars (Jasper) and 800 Bath (me because we ran out of dollars). 800 Bath is still more than 20 Dollars, but at least less than 1000 Bath! The official asked us for a “picture fee” of 100 Bath each, but by chance we did not pay it. That happened because we gave them 20 Dollars and 1000 Bath. But they did not take the extra 200 Bath as fee for both of us, but gave us back the 200 Bath. Maybe they thought we refused to pay and accepted that. When we got our visa we pretended not to understand the official asking for 400 Bath “tip” and left.
Welcome to Cambodia
We shared a taxi with another couple to Siem Reap and arrived there after dark. We stayed the night at the hostel which payed commission to the driver and was actually quite ok. But the next we looked for a better place and found it. The owners even offered to send one of their employees to pick us up from our old hostel!
The employee turned out to work as a tour guide as well and as he was from our hostel, we found him trustworthy. His name is Tall and in the afternoon he drove us to Angkor Wat Historical Park for sunset. The park is only a few kilometres away and we drove there in a comfortable Moto, which is basically a motorised Rikscha with very comfortable seats. At the ticket booths we joined one of the queues for the one day ticket. The ticket are made with photo identity, so the ticket booths have the facilities to take digital pictures of every visitor and print them with the ticket.
We then drove to a nearby hill and joined the hundreds of other sunset pilgrims to the top. On the first part of the way we were accompanied by the music of a small local band who were sitting at the foot of the hill and created some atmosphere. Later we heard similar bands at other temples as well. If you wanted, you could climb the hill on the back of an elephant. But that was a bit too expensive for us. So we walked. On top of the hill we saw our first big temple ruin with very (!) steep steps. From further away the steps look normal and you wonder why all the people walk them down so strangely. But when you stand in front of them you see that they are in fact super steep. Nevertheless we climbed up and enjoyed the view. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see the sunset, but it was still a nice experience. When we came down, Tall waved enthusiastically at us and we boarded the moto to drive back to the hostel. In fact Tall was the whole trip super reliable. Most of the time he was right there when we came out of some temple and greeted us with a happy smile. So he must have really looked out for us!
Temple on top of the hill for the sunset view
Why are people walking down so strangely?
Because the steps are super steep!
The next day we started at 5:30 for sunrise at Angkor Wat. We were not exactly in time, but neither was our guide. It had rained earlier in the morning and he was afraid of the rain because of the nuclear problems at Fukushima. Which was still unnecessary because we were thousands of kilometres away and the accident happened just recently. But better the people are too careful than careless..
Angkor Wat was crowded with other sunrise viewers, but again it was too cloudy to see it properly. But therefore we had the temple nearly for ourselves as it was so early in the morning. Afterwards we drove to the ruins of the ancient capital Angkor Thom, which houses lots of other temple ruins. At its height, it supported 1 million inhabitants in its walls (although it seems too small for SO many people) at a time when London counted 50,000 inhabitants.
Angkor Wat crowded with sunrise viewers
Angkor Wat
Gate to Angkor Thom
After Angkor Wat the most famous temple is the Bayong, which consists of dozens of stone faces. They resemble one of the former kings. Similar to Borobodur, everywhere in the temple you are watched by one of the stone faces.
Stone face at Bayong
We walked to several other temples in Angkor Thom, which was beautiful. But around 12 we were so tired that we decided to go back for the hostel for a lunch snooze. After all we were already 6 hours on our feet!
Temple in Angkor Thom
Angkor Thom
Angkor Thom
Around 2:30 we started refreshed and drove to a former water basin and Ta Prohm, another temple ruin not to be missed out on. Ta Prohm is famous for the huge trees which grow on its temple ruins. After all we were much more impressed by Ta Prohm then Angkor Wat and the Bayong. That might be due to the fact that we have already seen ruins similar to Angkor Wat on Java.
Former water basin
Ta Prohm
Ta Prohm
After Ta Prohm we visited some more smaller and bigger temples and climbed on one of them (very steep steps!) to enjoy the view.
Most of the temples were crowded with tourists and there were also a lot of local salespeople who tried to sell souvenirs and food. A few were also very clever in exploiting our respect for their culture. It happened two times that we got inscents to put at the foot of a Buddha statue and after we were asked to donate. It’s hard to get out of that because out of respect you do not want to decline. But the amount of money they ask is still few.
All in all we took more than 500 pictures on that day!
On the way back we booked a cultural dance show and buffet dinner for the next evening and then drove home.
The next day we slept a lot and relaxed from our day trip. In the evening we could walk by foot to the dinner and show. The buffet was huge and diverse, but it didn’t taste amazing. Same with the dances, which were nice, but not mind blowing. But for the price we payed for it, it was still nice and we had expected a similar quality.
Cambodian musical
The next day we did our second day trip. We started again at 5:30 for sunrise at Angkor Wat and this time it was amazing! The original plan was to drive afterwards to some further away ruins, but as it was too cool wind for us to drive for about 40km, we decided to first see some of the other temple ruins around Angkor Wat. Later in the morning it became warm as expected and we drove to the sights further away. We arrived around lunch time at our next location. We had to walk up a hill to reach a spring and small river which contained several stone engravings. Most famous are the lingas, clusters of round stone pillars which are supposed to be phalluses. That’s why the place is called the “river of the thousand lingas”. The walk was very pleasant and we even saw some lizards and two parrots. At the river there was an elderly man waiting for tourists to guide and we hired him because he asked if we had seen carvings we did actually not see. Without him I am sure we would have only seen half of the carvings, so it was money well spent.
Overgrown temple ruin
More overgrown temple ruins
overgrown entrance
Some lingas
Stone carving near lingas
After that we wanted to have lunch at one of the restaurants, but the prices were ridiculus expensive, so we sticked to our cookies instead and drove back half of the way to Bantey Sray, which is honoured for its stone carvings, which are among the finest of the world according to the Lonely Planet. And they were!
Banta Sray
Banta Sray
As we did not have a lunch break, we had some spare time which we used to visit the Cambodian Landmine Museum. In spite of clean up programs, Cambodia still suffers from intensive land mining, which is why you should not leave the path, especially not to use the bush toilet. As the book said “Better lose your dignity than an arm”. Nevertheless Cambodia holds a sad record of limp losses. This is partly because areas can become mined due to floods which move the land mines onto fields which were safe before.
After the landmine museum we still had too much time left until sunset, which we wanted to watch at another temple. Nevertheless Tall already drove us there. As we had to wait for about an hour, we gave in to our stomachs and bought some fried rice at the food stalls after some bargaining. The sunset was beautiful, but unfortunately our camera ran our of battery, so we have nearly no pictures.
Sunset above ruins
Sunset above ruins
This day was definitely the longest day trip we ever did: From sunrise to sunset, all in all 13 hours! So we were very happy to be back at our hostel and have a rest. But we still managed to walk to the night market because it was our last evening.
For our convenience we booked the whole trip from Siem Reap to Bangkok. In the other direction I would never do it because there is a high chance the bus drives three times longer than normal too arrive when the border is closed so that you have to stay overnight at a commission paying hostel. But on the way back there was no way to make profit for them as we border is only about 2,5 hours away from Siem Reap.
Luckily we were right in that and the ride back went well. It was even cheaper and definitely more convenient as when we had done everything in single steps (getting to the border – get from the border to town – get a bus to Bangkok).
We still had two days in Bangkok, which we spent at the cinema, eating at my favourite restaurants, meeting Pook and Baal and also for packing.
On Tuesday we got up at 4 in the morning because our minibus to the airport was leaving at 5. Our plane left at 9 and I have to say that Air India is really great! The food was fantastic and everyone had an individual screen where you could watch some movies which were just released in the cinemas. Good that we flew during the day because I did not have time to sleep. 
Only the transfer in New Delhi was stressful because we had only one hour on paper and because our plane was late even less. Luckily we were not the only ones with that problem. But the employees in the airport told us to hurry, so we jogged part of the loong way to the gate. Where we were told to relax and that we made it. The plane even waited for another 15 minutes until all passengers were on board.
In Paris we arrived at 6 pm local time, which was Midnight for us. Luckily it was not too cold as we had no winter clothes! We went straight with the metro to our hostel, where we had to pay right away and in cash. So we had to find an ATM. We did and then bought some Kebab to eat in our room. At 9pm Paris time and 3am biological time we were finally in bed.
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