SIEM REAP
The most touristic town in Cambodia
Also see our film about
Dominican Republic:
We will be pleased if you like this article.
It costs you nothing, but a good deed is done :-)
This is unusual, but we flew to Cambodia for two days, because a direct flight from Indonesian Bali to Thai Bangkok (from where we had to return to Kiev) was expensive, and if we play a little with the dates, then we dropped in Siem Reap for a couple of days. saved significant funds that could be spent on visiting Angkor Wat and getting to know the new Khmer culture for us. At the same time, the prices of Cambodia (if we add a little to the savings), allowed us to grab a truly luxury hotel for these two nights.
But we will tell everything in order. Siem Reap Airport looks like this.
Obtaining a visa ($ 30) was chaotic, several queues to the border guards confused us a little, but we were able to solve this quest and came out to a huge sign saying that the airport received 10 million passengers over the past year. We also took photos in national clothes right at the airport.
All warm countries resolve the issue of the Christmas tree in a rather monotonous manner. As a rule, this is a pyramidal structure made from scrap materials. But the transfer to the hotel is different for everyone. In Cambodia we were met by an individual driver who later became our hotel manager.
The driver, having chatted with us on various topics, loaded his suitcases into this white car and took us to the hotel.
The views from the window were somewhat reminiscent of the Ukrainian ones, when you pass by car, some village, for example, in the Zhytomyr region .
Only sometimes Buddha statues told us that we are far enough from Ukraine.
The hotel lobby greeted us with photographs of the current political leaders of Cambodia.
From the pleasant lobby there were romantic flowers and a welcome cocktail that we happily consumed.
If we say that the territory of the hotel was green, then this does not reflect even part of our impressions. Plants covered the territory so densely that we felt like in the jungle.
It can be seen that Cambodians are very proud of the abundance of their nature and try to show guests the maximum number of flowers and plants. Flowers floated in some bowls, sculptures were surrounded by lush vegetation.
The room in our villa has been designed in soothing colors and complemented by fresh flowers in the bathroom.
There was also a living room, but we didn't have time to use it. After all, we are in this city and this country only for two days.
All villas overlooked the pool, which was the center of the hotel grounds.
We photographed our villa from the pool side. The bedroom window was very densely overgrown with plants, and the gardeners specially thinned the living room window so that the view of the water was preserved.
Unlike many popular tourist destinations, in Cambodia, the pool was not closed from guests at night, but was specially illuminated in the evening and included hydromassage "guns"
Along the pool there are cabins with sofas and curtains, which are not occupied by "advanced tourists" with their towels at seven in the morning 😂😂😂
A gift from the hotel was a free cocktail party from 6 pm to 7 pm, when the bartenders made a huge range of cocktails from specialty drinks. Knowledgeable tourists (as in this photo) came early in order to have time for this hour to try the maximum options for drinks 😉
We also tried not to miss the chance to taste "Margarita" or "Sex on the Beach" prepared by the professional hand of a Khmer bartender. The most crucial moment came at 18:55, when a line of customers lined up to the bartender, who were in a hurry to order three or four cocktails at once 😂😂😂
The second pleasant feature was the tuk-tuk, which was waiting for us at the entrance all the time we stayed at the hotel. We took pity 😊 on the tuk-tuk driver and deigned to take us to the city on the street of pubs. We didn't want to eat or drink, but we really wanted to see how the people of Siem Reap entertain guests. Reporting about Angkor is a separate part of the Cambodian adventure, but we tried the very first Angkor on the pub street. This is Angkor beer, but what else should the beer be called in this place?
Cambodian cuisine attracted with its smells, but we did not react to them, because we read in the reviews of our hotel that the cuisine in our Metta Residence & Spa will be of the highest level. After walking for about an hour in the nightlife of Siem Reap, we returned to the place where our faithful tuk-tuk driver was waiting for us and drove back to the hotel.
On our return we headed to the restaurant to taste the local delicacies
We were met by a guitarist who played romantic ballads, and the waiters brought plates with a pyramid of palm leaves (under which there was rice) and something else incomprehensible.
Then they brought salads and desserts, which looked very unusual for us.
The next day we had a huge program with a visit to the temples of Angkor Wat, Angkor Tom and Ta Prohm . To accomplish all that was planned, we had to wake up at 4:30 am and meet an unforgettable sunrise in Cambodia . Therefore, we went to bed early enough and the next day, our plans for a short stay in the country were fulfilled by 120%. These couple of days in Cambodia flew by like one second, and now the guide-manager is taking us back to the airport. On the way, the landscapes did not resemble a jungle again, but more like a savanna, where animals graze.
Roads, passages and advertising boards reminded us of Ukraine again, and only the flags were different.
The main souvenir at the airport is materials about the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. This terrible history of the state, which was then called Kampuchea, is available on many Internet resources, so we will not repeat ourselves, but we note that this is a very important commercial part of modern Cambodia.
A small but interesting story: my thesis curator at a business school, loves to cook, and when she found out that I would be in Cambodia, she ordered me a book of Cambodian cuisine. It was a huge failure of mine (😉): the wide range of books on cooking at Siem Reap Airport was presented by a large number of publications, including Thai, Indian and Malaysian cuisine, but for some reason Cambodian was not there ...
Before departure, I photographed the airport hall, which became the final impression of such an unusual country as Cambodia.
