I came back! After wandering for more than 2 weeks around Singapore, KL, and Siem Reap. Got literally tons of pictures. Don’t know if I will ever get around to manage them all on this blog. I’ll just start on Siem Reap, since it’s really the most exciting of them all :)
For those of you who respond with “huh?”, Siem Reap is located in Cambodia, famous for the temples of Angkor, huge what-used-to-be city of temples. Angkor Wat, the biggest of them all, is said to be the world’s largest single religious monument. Avid fan would say that Angkor is more magnificent and grand than all of the 7 wonders of the world combined, and the reason it’s not one of the big 7 is because its existence was unknown at the time.
I’ve been craving to go there since my 1 month trip to South East Asia early last year, but couldn’t manage to fit it in, mainly because of time. Siem Reap International Airport was not opened until August 2006. Previously you need to go via Phnom Penh using either bus or boat for a few hours. So when I heard there were budget airlines going from Singapore/KL direct to Siem Reap, I knew the time was close for me to fly there!
Adventure to the Airport
Unfortunately I couldn’t get tickets from Singapore to Siem Reap by Jetstar (Air Asia doesn’t have Singapore-Siem Reap flight), while I managed to get the return tickets. Note that I tried to book them 3 months in advance! It was Singapore National Day weekend, that’s why it was full. So I did what I had to do. The time was then, I shall not delay any longer. These days time to travel is precious, money is of less importance. When I was a student, I had the time and no money. Right now I have the money (to some extent) and no frickin time. Life is not fair dammit! ANYWAY, so I bought Air Asia tickets from KL to Siem Reap. The frantic trip to KLIA from Singapore led me to adventure by itself.
I needed to work until Tuesday evening and our flight from KLIA was 10am in the morning. I was thinking really hard about how to get there in the most convenient and cheapest way possible. Consideration included taking bus from JB (it’s about the third of the price than taking it from Singapore) to KL and sleeping in the airport. But thinking that we still have days ahead, we finally opted for way that gave the most time to rest. We took KTM, Ekspress Senandung Malam that departed at 22:15pm from Singapore, at the cost of $34 for the upper berth at ADNS – Superior night (in other word, the cheapest bed in the train). Lower berth cost more at $39. I tried the cheapest seat many years ago and it was horrible. Bus seats are so much better.
We both took upper berths, so we could see each other.
I look kinda spooky here.
Lucky for me, the movement of the train made me feel like a baby in the stroller, so off I slept easily.
According to the schedule, we’re supposed to arrive at Sentral KL at 6:56am, which gave us around 3 hours to get to the airport. The last time I was in Malaysia, there was really no cheap way to go there. The airport is simply far away from everything else. Express monorail, bus, taxi, all expensive expensive (monorail and bus cost ~30MYR and taxi ~70-80MYR)! But apparently, not a while ago they started budget buses going to LCCT (Low Cost Carrier Terminal), from which our flight, Air Asia, took off (~9MYR).
But I woke up at around 7am seeing this:
Did not see any city or anything remotely to civilization! All jungles and tiny villages!
Trying to not panic, I took the view of the upper berth:
The bed was pretty much about my length, so I could straightened my legs. But any 20cm taller than me wouldn’t be very comfortable I guess. There’s no place to put your luggage, so you should keep that in mind. I put my backpack at the corner near my feet so it took some space for my feet away.
2 hours passed by and I still saw jungles. I was praying quietly that my watch was broken and it was NOT 9am. But Rendy woke up and told me “Hey it’s 9 o’clock!”
I know.
There was a guy who was looking as uneasy as us. By that time the train stopped at Seremban station. My memory tricked me into thinking Seremban was north of KL. I had a slight thought that we might have missed KL somehow. (But no, apparently Seremban was South of KL, and no we have not passed KL, obviously.) Apparently the guy also needed to catch a plane and started panicking because the train was still in Seremban at 9am when it’s supposed to arrive in KL at 7am. The train officer explained that the airport is nearer from Seremban than from KL. Also KL was still more than an hour way from Seremban by that stupid train. So the guy and we hopped off the train and rushed to the control station. We called him asking if he wanted to share taxi to the airport to which he surely must agree. We then spent more time asking the officers to chop on our train tickets to prove that it’s clearly NOT out fault if we’re late for the flight! (This was all the guy’s idea by the way. I can’t remember his name now. It’s probably Daniel. Let’s call him Daniel. He’s a Singaporean going to Philippines.)
The officers were pretty helpful, apart from making us super late (Apparently there was some faults with the engine, that’s why they stopped for a long time. At when I woke up and realized we were screwed.) One of them suggested we took a taxi, which cost around 60-70MYR. We rushed to the taxi line and got the first taxi, “60 ringgit ok?” He nodded and off we went. The taxi driver was Indian and named Kumar. He asked what time was our flight. I said 10am. “Wah! 10am cannot lah. I try ok. I try.” So Kumar sped up and we hung on for dear life. Daniel’s flight is at 11am, so he was in better position. During the trip Kumar kept saying “Pray your flight delayed. Pray lah.” He was also talking about Bumiputra always being late and lazy.
LCTT was SOO FAR AWAY from the main terminals okay! I thought we would never arrive for godssake. As soon as we hit the pavement I jumped off and ran to the check-in counters.
I had never been happier in my life than my flight got delayed.
Hurray for Air Asia! It conveniently got delayed for an hour, enough time for us to check-in and had breakfast. We had decent Nasi Lemak with ridiculous price for breakfast, and hot Milo. Yuumm..
We rushed to the boarding gate when they called our names, where Rendy’s bag got raped. They confiscated my BodyShop milk shower :( and shampoo bottle. Children, remember that you cannot bring any liquid bottle more than 100ml for each container and not more than 1L combined in your carry bag. I kinda knew about this but didn’t think they’re gonna be so strict about it. Moreover in Malaysia.
Finally, we got on the plane to Siem Reap, safe and sound. As exciting as everything was, I probably wouldn’t do this anymore for the longest time. But don’t bet on it =P
Tired, we fell asleep as soon as the plane took off. When I woke up we’re already there. Flight took around 2 hours.
Siem Reap Welcoming Party
This Manchester-United theme of Air Asia plane actually looks pretty cool. Like all boys, Rendy likes it a lot. So I took pictures of him with his favorite Soccer players.
Siem Reap International Airport looked all new, just opened its door less than a year ago.
You can apply for Cambodia visa on arrival for 20USD. You can also apply for e-Visa, which takes 3 days. Our first impression of the Cambodians weren’t so good. The officers in the airport were not nice at all. They talked as if they were the King of Cambodia and we were peasants. But in any way the process wasn’t that painful, so I wouldn’t complain too much.
The hostel where we stayed included free airport pick-up, so when we went out I saw a guy holding my name on a board. Poor him, he must’ve waited for a while. He asked us to wait at one spot. Rendy jokingly said he may come with a motorbike for 3 of us. It wasn’t that far off.
Isn’t fun? =D I introduce you to Siem Reap tuktuk. While Thai tuktuk is more like bajaj, this one is more like delman pulled by motorbike instead of horse. The guy standing there would be our tuktuk driver for the next 3 days. His name is Mr Chhoeung.
Arriving at the hostel (I’ll put the hostel on separate post, to include review), we ate our first Khmer food at the hostel’s restaurant (also separate post :), which was REALLY YUMMY! Met one waiter who told us almost his entire life story (who we would talk a lot with for the next few days, it became another story by itself. Have no idea where I should put this..) and another waiter who liked to greet people in several languages depending on where he thought they might be from. He greeted us in English, Mandarin, Korean, and Germany (so random). I heard him greeted other people in Japanese, Dutch, and god knows what else.
The Adventure to Find Soap
Having our soap confiscated by the Malay lady in the airport, we embarked on a journey to find soap in the town. It was just about 10 minutes walk from our hostel to the center of the town.
They didn’t have 7 Eleven, but they have 7 Twenty. Does it mean they open from 7:00 to 20:00?
All the prices were in USD. I read everywhere about this before I went. So you always have to have 2 currencies in your wallet. USD and Riel. They use Riel for small change. 1 USD = ~4000 Riel. So if the price is 50c, you can pay with 2000 Riel. By default you can also pay everything with Riel, they would just count it as 4000 Riel for 1 USD. During my days there I could change 100 SGD for 65.5 USD (bargained a bit. Remember that you can always, always, bargain for anything in Siem Reap). You don’t have to bother to change to Riel because you would get it later as change anyway. I did change about 50 SGD to Riel in the airport and proven wasn’t much use at all.
This is Bar St, the busiest street in town, full of cafes, restaurants, and other shops including second-hand bookshop. It’s especially alive at night.
I have not seen cows in the street since I was in primary school in Jakarta. By the way the land on the left and right side of my house before used to be cows’ playing ground. Hence the area where my house was, was called ‘Kandang Kebo’ (= cows’ nest). I read that they’re actually water buffaloes and not cows.
Catching the Sunset at Ta Promh Kei
The hostel people asked us if we wanted to catch the sunset, $3 to go and back by tuktuk. Sounded like a good deal, so we went with Mr Chheoung to Ta Promh Kei, a small temple just in front of the grand Angkor Wat (that for the next day). Before that we bought a 3-days pass for $40. The pass is valid for all Angkor temples except for 2 that’s really far away (we had a chance to visit one of them on day 3). If you buy the pass after 4:30pm, you can go to the temples and have the pass only starting the next day. They would take your picture for the pass so you can’t swap it with anyone.
To get to the temple we needed to hike a bit, around 15 minutes.
Above is the map to the temple. If it’s too small, the yellow one reads “elephants path”, red one “dangerous path”, green “safety path”. I actually saw elephants going to the left path at the foot of the hill. I’m not sure how dangerous is dangerous path. Like steep dangerous or full of mines dangerous?
Talking about land mine, we saw this music group on the way up:
They play to ask donation for land mine victims. I have no idea why Cambodia has so many land mines (and taken victims). I mean I know it’s because of war and all. But it almost sounds like they have land mines buried all over the country until now (which is not so far off from the truth). The story of land mines and the sight of their victims would go to no end until the end of our journey. Notice the couple of prosthetic legs leaned to their bench.
We got to the temple without much sweat and obviously we weren’t the only ones interested in seeing the sunset.
LOOK AT THE RIDICULOUS NUMBER OF PEOPLE CLIMBING THE STAIRS!! Like there’s GOLD on top okay!
This was the first time we learned that all the stairs of the Angkor temples were VERY-dangerously-STEEP. It even took me aback a little when I saw it. You literally have to climb up, and NOT walk up.
This sign didn’t help either (read: Warning!!! Climbing At Your Risk). It’s all over the place, at every steep stairway at every temple.
Rendy pointed that there was a slightly better pathway circling the stairway suggesting that we probably should take that one. Then I pointed to the fat old aunties and uncles climbing up. Of course we couldn’t take safer way and lose dignity. So up we climbed!
At the end there wasn’t much sunset to see because of the thick clouds. But it was a good appetizer for days ahead anyway.
There were so many people we had to fight for space to take pictures! As it got darker people started leaving. We’re about the last people who left. So below is the picture I captured when there was nobody left. Except for that lady who carefully went down trying not to kill herself. Believe me the stairs were a lot steeper than you can possibly see in the picture!
Ahh.. what a long day. We went back, took shower, went out for dinner (another separate post), then slept to get ready for another long day.. zzz..
