Cambodia: Temples & Culture

Despite the rocky start to Cambodia, it turned out to be a great trip, and a country that we fell in love with. It's definitely somewhere we want to go back to sometime!
Although I was feeling better by morning our first full day in Cambodia, we decided not to push it by heading out the temples. Instead, we relaxed by the pool, took naps, stocked up on some groceries, and took it easy.

 

By evening, we were ready to venture out and took our first tuk-tuk ride to Pub street, a street filled with restaurants, bars, and night markets. We ate at an authentic Italian restaurant, which had some of the best pasta we've had outside of Italy. Of course, Emmeline enjoyed her fruit shake the most.

 

We also wandered through some night markets, which we discovered are pretty much only in existence for tourists as they all sell the same cheap souvenirs. There were also people selling bugs and snakes to eat or take a photo of. Tons of street food vendors selling everything from fruit to ice cream to meat off a cart attached to their motorbike, but after my sickness, any sort of street food was totally off the table for me!

 

The next morning we did our first temple outing. It gets quite hot at the temples, even in this "cool" season, so we tried to get there somewhat early, but by the time we walked to Angkor Wat, we were all sweating. Emmeline was complaining about being hot (which in hindsight we should have taken more seriously, but we just thought it was because it really was hot). Nonetheless, Angkor Wat was as impressive as all the pictures make it seem! There were a lot of tourists everywhere, but there were still hallways you could walk down without anyone. The longest line was to climb the very middle tower, but because we avoided this, we somehow found a side entrance to the temple that had hardly anyone there and we were able to get a great family photo!

Next up we went to the faces of Bayron, which were also impressive, just in a different way. We were all getting pretty hot by this point, so we took some cool photos and then booked it back to our tuk-tuk driver, Mr. Rin, to go back to the hotel. The Angkor Wat grounds are huge and hundreds and hundreds of temples (some hours apart), you could spend days visiting them all, but we were happy with 2 for the day.

 

 

 

 






We decided to have lunch by the pool then, but this is when Emmeline really started complaining of not feeling well.  Thinking she just needed a nap, we took her up to the room where she proceeded to throw up. Turns out my food poisoning was probably actually a virus that she picked up, as she spent the rest of the afternoon and evening not being able to even keep down a sip of water (much like me). She had been complaining of her ear hurting the day before, so at first we thought it might be ear infection related and debating going to the international hospital, but in the end we decided to ride it out. By about 8pm she was feeling better, slept well that night and was fine the next morning. Almost exactly like my sickness!

 

Since she was feeling well enough and eating we were able to go to Ta Prahm, the tomb raider, tree temple, that morning. It was everyone's favorite temple of the three that we saw (except maybe Corabelle who slept the entire time), and although there were some tour groups we got stuck by at certain points, we were there early enough to avoid most of the hoards of people. And randomly, we saw the French lady from the airplane there!

 

 

 

 






While the girls and Nick played in the playroom and pool at the hotel, I decided to walk 10 minutes down the road to a local market since we never got to go in the old market the day before. I had read that it was a true locals market and a good look about what life in Cambodia is actually like. I thought I had prepared myself, but no, I'm not sure I've seen anything so crazy in my life. First, the market was huge, with a covered section filled with clothes, toys, gold (so much gold), household goods, etc. Then surrounding all sides are roads with veg, fruit, bread, fish, meat, etc. Except these roads not only are packed with people walking but also motorbikes that people are trying to drive through the hoards of people. Motorbikes packed with plastic bags full of meat on them (presumably for a restaurant), meat pastes that looked super unappetizing, pig heads, and so much meat just sitting out in the heat. It's not wonder food poisoning is common in this part of the world. Makes me appreciate the ice my market people use in Singapore! I wish I had taken more pictures as these only capture a snipet of what it was actually like, but I was too busy trying to find a way to walk through the roads! Also, no bugs or snakes for sale here, which tells me that's purely for the tourists!

 

That's meat on a motorbike!

 

 

Overall, we really loved Cambodia. The people are some of the nicest people we've met anywhere in the world, even ones that didn't speak any English. The culture was fascinating, and it's definitely somewhere we'd like to come back to someday. We never got to try any true Cambodian food, as we had planned a Cambodian restaurant the night Emmeline was sick, so that's on the list of reasons to return to Cambodia. :) There's some pretty beautiful beaches in Cambodia, so maybe that will be next on the list!