Date: 20 December 2009

The 3 of of us - Daeved, Javen and I put up a night at Han Yuen's (Han) house the previous night and we woke up early in the morning, 4am as our flight was at 7am. After washing up and made sure everything was in place, while waiting for the taxi to pick us up to the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT), group shot of course :)

We reached LCCT at around 6am, checked in and enjoyed our simple breakfast before we went in to the gate. Our flight was Airasia AK280.

The flight was smooth, without any hiccups (thank god) except for the 30min delay that we had to wait on board, but everything was fine. The journey from Kuala Lumpur to Siam Reap was roughly 2 hours. Cambodia is 1 hour behind of Kuala Lumpur, GMT + 7. It was only 8+am when we reached the airport. We stepped down from the plane and walked our way to the terminal. Quick photo session before we saw the security guards walking towards us :p

We were deciding whether or not to exchange some Cambodia currency, the Riel as we only brought USD. It was lucky that we didn't as the main currency for tourists was USD. Most of the places accept or ONLY accepts USD. For your information, 1USD = 4000 Riel. The smallest usable US note in Cambodia is USD1. For amount less than that, Riel will be used, e.g. for USD 0.5, you will be given 2000 Riel.

After we had stepped out from the Siam Reap airport, to our surprise, the hotel that we have booked, Empire Hotel, which is a 4 star hotel, actually arranged a taxi to pick us up from the airport. Very thoughtful of them. By the way, before I forget, we actually booked the whole package - round trip air ticket + 3 nights hotel accommodation through Airasia website. The hotel wasn't far from the airport and it only took around 15 minutes.

On our way to the hotel - I love the blue sky and cloud formation

The outlook of the hotel was clean. We were told by the taxi driver that this hotel only started its operation a year ago. The interior was very good I would say and we were even served with a welcome drink - a glass of orange juice for each of us while we're waiting to be checked in.

We had 2 twin sharing rooms. The rooms were clean, neat and spacious! Han Yuen and I shared a room.

After we've settled our luggage and cleaning up, we went to the lobby to get more details on where to go and visit. Honestly speaking, we had not done any prior arrangement or planning before the trip. We only had our hands on the Lonely Planet the night before which I got it from MPH, Midvalley.

Han Yuen in front of our room

Anyway, we found that there were actually a lot of day trip package available. With the help of the friendly hotel staffs, we decided to take the package to Tonle Sap Lake. The package included pickup service from hotel to the jetty, cruise ride at the lake to visit the floating villages, sunset viewing on a boat deck, dinner, free flow of drinks (which includes beer) and finally transport back to the hotel. All this for only USD33 per person. I would say that this was pretty affordable.

Since the guide will only pick us up from the hotel at 3pm, we decided to explore the city a little on our own before that.

Our hotel and the blue sky

Traveling around Siam Reap is easy as there are always "tuk-tuk" around the corner. Tuk-tuk is just a motorcycle, but dragging a carriage behind which can fit 4 person in it. The price can be negotiated and please, it must be done before you board. We thought that it was ok for us to save a few USD and decided to walk along the street to the Cambodia Cultural Village. We rejected few offers from the tuk-tuk drivers in front of the hotel. They are sure like flies I would say - They kept bugging us to offer their service and even when we're walking along the street, many drivers approached us to offer their service which we turned them down. All you need is  to be persistent while rejecting them :p

By the way, if you're curious how we actually communicate with the locals, we spoke english and almost everyone that we met during this trip speaks pretty fluent English. Sad but true, I found even the local kids speak better English than many Malaysians. This is probably due to the heavy development of tourism in Siem Reap, which has attracted many travellers from all around the world.

On our way we came by this shop - Senteurs d'Angkor Workshop, got attracted by the word "Free tour" on the banner and decided to walk in to check it out.

Apparently this is a place where they fabricate soap, candles, fragrance oil etc out of local ingredients. They also do foodstuff such as coffee powder, spices, rice out of local plantation as well. We were given a free tour around the premise and was shown how everything was done. The lady staff, Net, who brought us around was very friendly and answered our questions patiently. The last part of the tour was into their product shop and everyone of us had made up our mind to buy something, but not today as we didn't want to carry plastic bags to walk around.

Making boxes with dried and dyed palm leaves

Making soap of different scents and shapes

Cleaning coffee beans with rice wine

Some plants in the premise

We proceeded our walk to the cultural village. I would say it was around 800m from our hotel. The entrance fee is USD11 and they have programs and shows such as cultural dance, traditional wedding ceremony etc. throughout the day. Too bad we didn't have the time to stay here so we left. It was a pity that we didn't have the chance to go in but this will definitely be a place I want to visit if I ever have the chance to visit Siam Reap again.

It's lunch time and we wanted to go to Siam Reap town to look for food. We looked on map and it's quite a distance. Since we're lazy to walk anymore we decided to give the tuk-tuk a try. We talked to a driver outside of the cultural village and after some bargain, we made a deal of USD4 to send for of us to the town.

The weather in Siem Reap, although is as hot as it is in Malaysia (~30°C), which you can feel the sun scorching your skin, the air is dry. This means that you won't be sweating like how we usually do in Malaysia. It leaves our skin dry. Furthermore while we're on the tuk-tuk, since it's not enclosed, we can still feel the cool breeze, which was something different.

The driver dropped us at Bar Street, where there are many restaurants along the street. Since none of us had small change to pay the driver, neither did he have change for us, he told us that he will pick us up from the same location at 2pm and only pay him after he has sent us back to the hotel. They really do trust travellers!

Since we didn't have any recommendation, we decided to step into a restaurant which looks cozy to us.

The food we ordered to share among us

The food was great. We enjoyed our meal and stuffed our stomach. The environment in the restaurant was so cozy, and since all of us didn't grab much sleep the night before, we didn't feel like leaving our comfortable seats. The lunch cost us a total of around USD20.

We walked around the town a little before we heading back to our tuk-tuk pickup spot and head back to the hotel.

Dried and chillied "siham" - many people selling this "delicacy" but we didn't dare to try

This guy will only perform if we paid USD1!

Daeved enjoying his Coke in the hot weather

You can see people here doing amazing things with bicycles

We rest a little in our room, head down to the lobby to meet up our guide for the Tonle Sap tour - Sim. We were the first group to get picked up by a van. Later 2 pairs of couple, 1 from New Zealand and another from the states, from 2 different hotels. The journey to the lake took 45 minutes and Sim explained lots of things about the country to us.

We reached the jetty and boarded our "cruise"

During the journey, there was a local kid which I believe is the kid of one of the stafff, caught my attention. His smile was so pure and innocent.

Han Yuen wanted a photo too

According to Sim, During the dry half of the year the lake shrinks to as small as 2,500km² - water drains into the Tonle Sap River and merge with the Mekong River. In the wet season, a unique hydrologic phenomenon causes the river to reverse direction, filling the lake instead of draining it and making it one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia, covering an area of 12,000km².

On this lake there are many floating villages. Floating village is made up of several floating houses, which can move around, dragged by a motor boat. People staying here live a very simple life - main entertainment during the night is watching TV with family members, which power is generated by petrol generator. There is no power supply the the houses. They earn a living by selling food, drinks and souvenir to tourists. Of course, the only transport available is by boats.

We were first brought to a floating market so we can have a look at the souvenirs. They keep crocodiles at the bottom deck! Better watch our steps.

Local kid riding on his "boat", with water snake in his hand

A group photo with the Cambodia flag

We stayed in this place for roughly 30 minutes. I kinda had a phobia here because I was chased by a little girl, age around 10, with a phython around her neck, who wanted me to touch it. I was running backwards and nearly fell into the lake. Well, I am afraid of snakes afterall. Forget about this scary experience, we rode on the same "cruise" we took and was transported to a larger boat, where we get to enjoy the beautiful sunset while having our dinner and our free flow drinks.

This was the boat - took this before we left

Angkor Beer before our dinner

Group photo together with Sim (standing in the middle)

The view would have been better without the clouds

Our free flow drinks

Angkor Beer and Beerlao - we prefer Angkor Beer :)

My dinner - fried rice with beer

We did make extra order of french fries at no cost and we were also served with fruits as desserts.

No more sun...

We left the boat at around 7.30pm. The surrouding was all dark and I love the starry starry night

Once we have landed at the jetty, we took the same van back to the hotel. That ends our first day in Siem Reap. Stay tune for my next blog entry on our amazing trip. Next stop is the National Heritage, Angkor Wat.

For more photos please visit my flickr @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/mauinsons/sets/72157623158903636/

Related reading:

1. Explore Siem Reap, Cambodia - Day 2

2. Explore Siem Reap, Cambodia - Day 3 & 4