Si Phan Don (4000 islands)
Finally, the country I’ve been so so so excited about visiting! When we moved to HK, this was the one place I wanted to see and I was really looking forward to it, having heard so much great things about it from others.
The journey from Siem Reap to Si Phan Don was ‘interesting.’ We had to take a series of mini buses and each one seemed to get smaller, however there was the same amount of people in each one- resulted in lots of squashiness from a considerable part of the 10 hours it took. The Cambodia-Laos border is a gigantic joke. There’s all the usual tourist taxes and accepted bribes everyone has to go through, and security was non existent.
Once we arrived in Nakasang, a teeny village 25km from the border, we were herded onto a raft to wait for a boat. At this point, we noticed a group of men downing beer to the side of the raft. Oh wait……they’re the boat drivers? Excellent. Sometime later, we landed on Don Khone, one of the bigger islands and found our super cute guesthouse.
I think Sam and I are divided about Don Khone- I really liked it because it had a rustic village feel to it. We hired bikes and cycled out to rapids and waterfalls, temples and through rice fields. Sounds great, yes? Sam did not seem to think so. A) Sam is not the biggest fan of cycling and we have already done ALOT during this trip. B) It was either roasting hot or pouring down with rain. C) There was mud. Everywhere.
I LOVED IT.
We ate overlooking the Mekong in cheap restaurants, read in hammocks outside our room whilst looking at views like this, and slept a lot. What’s not to love?
After a couple of days, we traveled 4 hours to Pakse for a connecting sleeper bus to Vientiane, the capital. This was not the most fun I’ve ever had. All in it took 22 hours and although I’m glad we’ve done it, I’m not looking forward to the next one in a few days.
Down time
Caveat: I wrote this about 4 days ago, but we’ve been without internet.
There isn’t a huge amount to update in this post to be honest! We’re still in Siem Reap and have been relaxing to the max.
Having maxed out on temples, we’ve been relaxing a bit. We enjoyed a few rounds of minigolf at “Angkor Wat Putt”, a temple themed mini golf course. As well as being very cool, they also gave a free beer or soft drink for every hole in one, which we both managed. I was victorious on the day, although admittedly not by much.
Sizing up Angkor Wat for a hole in one.
The day after we moved to our current digs at Sojourn Boutique hotel (still in Siem Reap.) It had been recommended to us by our friends (hello Lizzy and Swiss) and I’d booked it in as a treat for Laura’s birthday. It’s an incredible hotel; very quiet, lovely pool to cool down when the suns out, luxurious rooms (with bath robes: I love bath robes,) tastey food and cheap cocktails.
Laura’s birthday was yesterday and her friends had lined up a swathe of treats for us. A nice afternoon in the spa (thanks Shirley and Ryan) followed with some white chocolate and raspberry birthday cake (thanks again Shirley and Ryan,) before going for “destination dining” in the evening (thank you Lizzy and Swiss.) We had a private terrace, a private chef and waiter, even a guy playing some sort of Cambodian xylophone as we tucked into an incredible three course feast (topped off with some baileys.) It was a wonderful experience and we were truly very spoilt.
It’s now going to be a rough crash down to earth. Tomorrow we have an 8 hour bus journey to 4000 islands in Laos, which is somewhat unsuprisingly a huge bunch of islands in the Mekong. We have a basic homestay booked and look forward to a day of cycling, before going on a 15 hour or so bus journey up to the north of the country to the capital Vientiane. Spotify is fully loaded up, Kindles are charged, and we’re ready to get back on the backpacking trails.
All templed out….
Mission accomplished- somehow we’ve managed 3 days of temples. Although it’s been hard work at times because of the heat and the distances we’ve had to cover, it’s been totally worth it. Yesterday we hired a tuk tuk and went 2 hours northeast of SR to Beng Mealea and Bantaey Srei, also a cheeky last visit to Angkor Wat.
As well as seeing what seems like hundreds of temples, we’ve managed to fit in some awesome eating and drinking too, as well as an anniversary stay at The Shinta Mani Club. This hotel had got to be one of the best we’ve ever been to, if you ever get to come to Siem Reap, do a night here. Amazing.
Siem Reap monopoly, anyone?
Siem Reap & Angkor
Following our lovely trip to Battambang we’ve headed to Siem Reap, tourist capital of Cambodia and home to the famous temples of Angkor. Most people who visit Cambodia normally just visit Siem Reap to do the temples and never explore the rest of the country. As a result the entire city is built up to cater for tourists of all shapes and forms- from streets full of mid-range hotels to backpacker central near the aptly named “Pub street”, high priced boutique hotels and everything in between. This place is built to cope with tons of tourists.
Surprisingly though, there isn’t much to do (other than the temples). There’s plenty of restaurants and bars of varying quality, and plenty of places that will offer draft beer for 50c. But if you’re not eating or drinking, there doesn’t seem to be much else to do so far!
This hasn’t been an issue for us yet as we’ve been busy doing the Angkor temples. In the 11th and 12th centuries the kings of that time went on a massive building spree, building temple after temple in the Angkor area. All the temples have switched between Hindu and Buddhist in that time too. As a result you have a condensed area with absolutely tons of amazing architecture in various states of decline, from fully renovated to taken over by the trees.
The most famous of the temples is Angkor Wat; We made the effort to see it at sunset and sunrise (which meant a 4:30 start!).
We spent 2 days cycling around the temples; there’s a big loop (37km) and an inner loop (16km) which meant we got very sweaty: temperatures hit the mid thirties which meant we were devouring water at a rate of knots.
There are too many temples to talk about without being overly boring, so I’ll just mention my 2 favourite ones. Bayon is famous for it’s many faces- decorative stone columns with huge faces carved onto them. We came here straight after sunrise, about 5:40am, and had the entire temple to ourselves- very rare as it’s one of the most popular temples and normally rammed.
The entire temple is huge. It’s unfathomable how the ancient Angkorians built such amazing structures without modern technology. It’s an engineering feat, combined with some incredible decoration. Both Laura and I agree this is our favourite temple.
Ta Prohm, aka the tomb raider temple (they used it in the film) has been left almost completely derelict with the exception of wall reinforcements. The trees have been allowed to grow wild and intermingle freely with the structures. These aren’t just little trees, but monster ones which have been allowed to grow for centuries.
After two days we’re both templed and cycled out. Fortunately it’s our anniversary, and we’ve checked into a nice hotel with a pool to celebrate and relax. We’ve still got a day left on our Angkor passes though, so who knows? Maybe we’ll go see even more temples!
Battambang- worth the detour
So 3 weeks in and we’ve ended up in Battambang, supposedly Cambodia’s 2nd largest city, after Phnom Penh….. so where is everyone? This is such a sleepy place, noone seems to be in a hurry to go anywhere or do anything and there isn’t actually that much to do…..or so Lonely Planet told us….
Another lesson learnt: Don’t believe everything LP tells you.
This is an awesome little place, so much so that we’ve extended our stay by 2 nights. It’s not go go go like PP was, however there is a lot to do, but at a relaxed pace. The architecture is stunning, all French colonial and eclectic. Just taking a walk around here was fascinating. It’s just outside the city that you see really cool stuff though – we hired some bikes and cycled north where we found a stunning temple.
If you’re ever in Battambang, go see the circus- it’s an arts school for teenagers- absolutely incredible. The original circus is in Battambang but when the students graduate they can go onto perform in the professional show in Siem Reap- all the proceeds from the show are invested back into the students education.
For our last day in BB, we went on another cycle trip, this time heading south to see the Killing caves. A similar situation to that in Phnom Penh, I’m only just beginning to comprehend the scale and impact of the Khamer Rouge and all of the suffering that people here went through. It’s hard to imagine that almost every family here would have lost at least 1 member to the atrocities. On our way out, we saw the famous bat caves- every night, at dusk, millions of bats leave the cave to fly to Tonle Sap lake to feed. Our camera didn’t do a great job at capturing it, but it was truly amazing. The fly in groups so from a distance it looks like a massive swarm of bees flying towards you!
