Category: cambodia

Good morning Cambodia! Free hotel breakfast, at long last.

Cambodia was a former French colony, hence the baguette.

We got two tuktuk through Bou Savy and a tour guide named Sen for our trip to Angkor Wat.

Wheeeeeee.

This is Sen.

You can actually rent a bicycle to go around Angkor Wat, but are you kidding me. (I’m not an athletic person, as you can glean from my posts.)

The stone structures and engravings are incredible.

Apsara!

These huge tree just grew around the ruins.

Lunch! I had this yummy lychee-flavored soda.

Here we are, entering the main temple. Angkor Wat is the largest religious (first Hindu, then Buddhist) monument in the world.

This post has hardly any words, but words and even these photos are inadequate. You have to be there, to fully appreciate the scale of this complex.

Heaven and hell.

We planned to wait for the sunset at Angkor Wat, but we finished the tour at 3 PM, and I personally couldn’t wait three hours under the hot sun in my sweaty clothes. So off we go to Bou Savy to freshen up and fix our things.

Look at the chandeliers in Cambodia’s airport.

We boarded the 10:30 flight and arrived in Manila at half-past two. Home. :)

Total expenses for Cambodia is USD 206.

Total expenses overall: USD 898.58 or around PhP 42,000.

You may download our complete itinerary here:

Hanoi-BKK-SiemReap_Final

Thanks to Grace for making the Excel file. :D

I almost didn’t go on this trip, but I’m glad I did.

My thanks to my friends, especially to June, who painstakingly read every blog post ever written about trips to these countries, and so I pass on this information to you. :)

I fell asleep on the bus! This was an achievement.

If you’re traveling by land from Bangkok to Cambodia, it is important that you have luggage small and light enough to lift over bumps, because you will be walking from the bus stop to  the border.

The phrase “the border” has such dark connotations, thanks to Hollywood portrayal of the Mexican border, but our crossing over to Cambodia was rather uneventful. We walked through a dusty road and entered the Immigration Office, with wooden floors and creaky wall fans. Immigration officials were jolly. This office, strangely, was not located directly on the border, so that means you would be walking in the Kingdom of Cambodia visa-less for around five to ten minutes, passing by casinos and souvenir stores.

After having our passports stamped, we were given a free ride to the tourist lounge in Poipet.

The lounge looked deserted.

We hired a van to take us to our hotel, Bou Savy Guesthouse.

My friends with cold towels, writing their names in the tourist registry.

I like Bou Savy. It’s homey, the people are nice, and the food is affordable. Order their curry! It’s so good, and not very spicy, perfect for spicephobes. (I made that word up.)

Iced coffee! Finally!!!

Thank God for this quiet first day. We just stayed indoors until it was time to go to the night market.

We also tried their sidewalk massages.

See the fishies in the aquarium there? That’s a Happy Feet station, except that tilapia ‘ata yung kakain sa dead skin cells mo. (Seriously, the fish were big.)

Sarap.

I would have wanted a longer back massage, but I didn’t have any more dollars.