Angkor Wat

So much has been written about the temples of Angkor Wat that I’m not going to go into too much detail about everything we did. Instead, I’ll focus on some of our highlights and favorites.

To start, a summary: the temples around Siem Riap in Cambodia were constructed during the reigns of several kings approximately 800-1200 years ago. They are remarkably well-preserved, for the most part, and attract hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world every year. We spent two full days plus an extra evening visiting the temples, which is certainly not enough time to see them all, but plenty of time for a heat-sensitive person like me to spend wandering around in 100-degree-plus temperatures!

Our first evening, we headed out to the main temple, Angkor Wat, to see the sunset. [Three-day passes are available for $40, but if you purchase your pass after 5pm, you can add an extra evening. Having your own passport photo will speed the process.] We spent a couple of hours roaming the walkways and climbing the steep stairs, admiring carvings and bas-relief. Here are some of our favorite photos:
We did this steep climb, too! It’s pretty scary, but worth it to see what’s up there.
We made it. Great views of the treetops! That is definitely southeast Asia.
I love stone pillars.
Sunset is a great time to see the temples. Some people don’t like the crowds, but I enjoy hearing the different languages and watching people have their temple-viewing experiences.
These bas relief went on for what felt like miles...
Robert enjoyed studying them and using the guidebook to understand the stories.
I preferred sitting in shady windows to read about Cambodian history when it got too hot to walk around!
The moon was bigger in real life than it is in the photo, but I still like the photo.

Bou Savy Guest House Review

We traveled in Cambodia and Malaysia for a total of 17 days, staying at 8 different guest houses. One of these was by far and away our favorite, and we want to highly recommend it to any travelers to the Siem Riap area.

Bou Savy Guest House is a fairly new guest house, run by a very friendly family. We found it online by searching the Siem Riap and Angkor Hotels Directory website, and selected it because it was given high marks for caring for the customer and caring for the destination. We were able to reserve our room online without having to give credit card information – an important criteria for me as I wanted the security of having a room in advance without having to worry about identity theft or fraud.

Upon our arrival at the guest house, we had to wait a little while as they looked for our reservation, but that was no problem because we had time to enjoy our “welcome drinks” – tasty banana shakes – while sitting in the shady patio area. Finally, we were led up to our lovely, air-conditioned, 3rd floor, $15-per-night room.


We enjoyed three nights of cool, quiet sleep at the Bou Savy. I also took advantage of the book trade and the 3rd floor porch. We had laundry done twice, both times for an affordable price. Perhaps best of all was the excellent breakfast – included as part of our room rate – of eggs, baguettes, fresh fruit, and juice, tea, or coffee.


The atmosphere at Bou Savy was completely relaxed and friendly. I felt very safe there and was sorry to leave. On our last morning, before we left for the airport, we asked one of the staff if we could purchase a couple of extra baguettes for snacking on our flight to Malaysia. When the manager found out we wanted to pay for the bread, he refused, and insisted that we take it for free. We were touched. I hope that more travelers stay at the Bou Savy so that such excellent service and staff can be rewarded!

An Afternoon and Evening in Kampong Cham

With only six days to spend in Cambodia, we planned to focus on its major destinations: the capital city of Phnom Penh, and the Angkor Wat area around Siem Riap. When our friend Vanessa, a former Peace Corps Thailand volunteer and current Cambodia resident, told us she’d be in the small town of Kampong Cham during our visit, however, we decided it was worth making a short detour to a less-visited spot. It was well worth the effort.

We arrived in KC hungry after spending hours on the bus, so we rushed out to one of Vanessa’s recommended restaurants on the river road. There are two places along the river, both owned by foreigners, that serve a combination of Western and Cambodian food. We went to the one closer to our hotel.

I think we shocked the owner a bit with our appetites, and then we were shocked ourselves by the amount of food that arrived at our table. We feasted on vegetarian spring rolls, amoc, and stir-fried vegetables with tofu.
I also enjoyed a mango shake. Yum!

Dining on the Mekong River was pleasant as usual, and some excitement occurred when a political parade suddenly came along. Dozens of trucks and hundreds of motorcycles, all filled with cheering, singing, laughing Cambodians in light blue shirts, streamed by. We were impressed by both the enthusiasm of the political expression and the relative calmness of the parade as a whole, as in Thailand such events are usually marked by excessive drunkenness. We waved and clapped for the riders.

Vanessa was working a temporary contract with Peace Corps Cambodia, which just started in January (hooray!), as a trainer for the newly arrived volunteers. We met her and one of her fellow trainers, a long-time Peace Corps international staff person from Nepal, at the riverside park across the street from our hotel. Over Angkor beer, they told us some of the stories of the new Cambodia volunteers.

Despite the size of our earlier meal, we were hungry enough to wander down to the second of Vanessa’s two favorite restaurants with her after dark. Robert tried one of the traditional Cambodian beef dishes, which he reported was delicious, while I had a simple vegetable curry. Vanessa told us more about Cambodia and its problems, which we appreciated learning because as tourists it’s often difficult to see behind the outer facade of daily life.

Among some of the issues we discussed were the relative dangerousness of life, in particular at night; the astounding corruption that occurs at all levels of government and business; the marked gap between the extremely wealthy and the rest of the population; and the continuing effects of the Khmer Rouge regime and genocide.

Of all her stories, the ones about corruption were most disturbing to me. Because she had been working closely with the new volunteers and their Cambodian counterparts, she had many stories about how corruption was manifested at the school level. Teachers make just $45 per month in Cambodia, which is an astonishingly small amount, even in this poor country. As a result, teachers spend a majority of their time trying to make money from activities other than teaching, such as attending paid workshops, doing paid tutoring, or working at other jobs. Students are charged for the paper on which they take tests, because the teachers have to buy it out of their own pocket. School is closed far more often than it’s open – in the two months that the trainees had been in Kampong Cham, school had only been open for four days. And summer break was still weeks away.

I thought the school system was bad in Thailand, and it is, but Cambodia made Thai education look like a stellar example. I was constantly frustrated when classes were cancelled on a weekly basis in Thailand, but I can’t imagine the frustration I’d face if they were cancelled every day! It’s hard to know what hope there is for a country in that situation. You’ve got to have a critical mass of people who are interested enough in making things different for it to actually happen. Because of the way that corruption works in Cambodia, enabling people who take advantage of the system to be better off than those that want to make it work, it looks like there won’t be much improvement any time soon. We’d never have known all this about Cambodia just from being tourists. It is really worth it to spend time talking with someone who knows what going on, down on the level of the real people!

Mekong Hotel, Kampong Cham, Cambodia

We spent one night in Kampong Cham, Cambodia, on a short detour between Phnom Penh and Siem Riap. Choosing a hotel was easy – only one had our desired combination of air-conditioning, private bathrooms, and a location on the river. All that was made even better by the utterly affordable price of $10 per night.

The hotel is located not far from the bus stop, but with our bags we opted to take a tuk-tuk anyway. After checking in, we trudged up the giant staircase to the spacious halls of the second floor. Our corner room had windows over looking the river, plenty of space, and a hot shower.


Just across the street from the hotel is a quiet riverside park, with a few vendors selling beverages at sunset, and tables to sit at while the night falls. We found it to be a quiet spot, even on a Friday night. In the morning, I watched fishermen starting their day’s work on the water.

On the Road in Cambodia

We made two bus trips in Cambodia: one from Phnom Penh to Kampong Cham, and one from Kampong Cham to Siem Riap. On the whole, I would say that bus travel in Cambodia is relatively easy, somewhat comfortable, and extremely cheap.

Our first bus was late, slow, crowded, and hot. Aside from feeling stuck to the seat, however, it was not an unpleasant ride. The scenery was interesting, and the comedy show playing on the TV was not obnoxious. (See Brian's blog for a funny description of some of the obnoxious bus entertainment in Thailand!) The second bus was spacious, cool, and quick. I think it just depends on luck. I’d advise travelers to have morning departure times when possible. Nighttime bus travel isn’t safe in Cambodia.


Many of the locals can’t afford the air-conditioned buses, of course, or they might not live near a route. They might instead ride something like this:Or this:

Watching vehicles go by on the highway was better than a movie!

One Last Phnom Penh Photo

Everybody needs gas!