After an amazing 30 days in Thailand it was time to move on, onto Cambodia. We got a very straightforward boarder crossing bus from Bangkok straight to Siem Reap. I'd been to Cambodia, very briefly(10 days), as my last stop prior to the pandemic heading up and I had to come home. So like Northern Thailand, some of this visit was a repeat of where I visited before - but we've been making conscious efforts to also experience new things in each place so it's not a complete copy of my last trip. But, fair to say I was super excited to come back to Cambodia and have the time to actually enjoy it this time!
We started in Siem Reap, a beautiful, bustling but tranquil city that sits along a river. We had a good chunk of time here, 6 days in the end, including the Christmas period. So it was lovely to take things a little slower and really get to know the city. I remember feeling before like Siem Reap had a similar vibe to Chiang Mai, so of course I loved it, and I fell even more in love this time.
After a day exploring the city, exchanging our last Thai Bahts and getting familiar with our home for the next week, we sorted our trip to Angkor Wat. The Angkor complex, most notably know for its central temple Angkor Wat, is a complex of incredibly beautiful and detail temples built between the 11th and 13th century, when Siem Reap was previously called Angkor. Getting up to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat is also a pretty famous, and spectacular thing to do, so of course we did just that! We set alarms for 4am, for a 4:30am pick up🫠 But it is worth it.
Sunrise over Angkor Wat is so beautiful. Although the site is packed with tourists hoping to get that classic red sky sunrise shot, everything is so quiet and peaceful. Maybe it's just because people are still waking up, I certainly was! But it makes for such a tranquil start to the morning. Chris and I had bought sandwiches from a cafe the day before to have as breakfast, so once the sun has risen we found a spot to eat those before a busy day exploring the temples.
Despite having visited this complex back in 2020, I was still super excited to walk through and explore all the temples. Also explore then with Chris, who I knew would love them! Just like last time, it was a longggg and hot day. But still so amazing! And quite nicely, we visited a few temples I did see last time, which was a nice way to mix up the day and experience something new!
Beyond just Angkor Wat
The Angkor complex is incredible, there is no deny that. But often when talking about Siem Reap, that's all people refer to or think about. But we wanted to explore more of Siem Reap, beyond the ancient temples.
So, we did our favourite thing. Rented push bikes and did a LOT of cycling. First, we discovered there is a free botanical gardens, about 3km outside of the center. This made for a really peaceful afternoon and stroll. After an hour or so walking around we took a seat in the cafe, next to a beautiful lily pond and enjoyed our new favourite drinks - Italian sodas😍.
To change the mood completely, we then cycled just around the corner to an organisation called APOPO. This multinational NGO focuses on training rats to support humanitarian aid and causes globally. In Siem Reap and Cambodia specifically though, they train rats to smell and detect TNT, to help identify undetinated land mines, missions and other explosives left over from the years of conflict inflicted on Cambodia.
During the Vietnamese war, the US were also bombing Cambodia as part of their tactics, it was known as "the secret war", in the four years between 1969 to 1973, the US dropped over 500,000 bombs, across almost 4000 bomb raids on Cambodia. Unfortunately following this horrific attack, the rebel group Khmer Rouge took power of Cambodia, promising people safety and a new life after the atrocities of the previous four years. Unfortunately the exact opposite happened, resulting in mass genocide, but I'll get into that in a later post from Cambodia. But, during that time even more bombs were dropped, landmines places by the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese.
Ultimately resulting in a country riddled with explosives. Since 1980, when the country overulled Khmer Rouge and began its journey to recovery, efforts have been made to clear land of the undetinated explosives and keep communities safe from accidentally triggering them. Since the end of the wars almost 20,000 people have been killed and over 50,000 injured by accidentally detonating an explosive, often in rural countryside, and horribly, over half of those people are children. Just playing near their house. But its slow and dangerous for humans to find and identify these explosives. However the rats trained by APOPO aren't heavy enough to detonate the explosives, but move fast and efficiently to sniff out and mark where there is TNT. Meaning an explosives team can go in and safely remove or detonate it.
We did a tour around the APOPO site in Siem Reap, learning about its history and purpose, and meeting the rats themselves. Here we had a demonstration of how quickly a rat can identify TNT and how it's marked down. To check and clear a tennis court size bit of land would take humans 4 days, but a rat just 30 minutes! Thats how efficient it is!
I'd definitely recommend looking into APOPO and the work they do in Cambodia and beyond. In Africa, they've also trained rats to smell Tuberculosis in samples from people, and help drastically reduce the misdiagnosed rate. Some really incredible stuff!
To wrap up an already incredible and informative day, we hit the roads again on our bicycles and cycled 5km outside of town to go to the circus!🎪not just any circus though, a spectacular social enterprise circus. One thing you'll notice throughout my Cambodia posts, is just how many incredible NGOs, charities and social enterprises there are across the country, ranging from internally initiated initiatives, to those founded in global aid.
The Phare Circus School was founded by 9 men who left the Khmer Rouge refugee camps. They were inspired by and found healing power in art classes and art therapy after the regime. They wanted to share the power of art with others, and support local communities. They opened soon opened an art and music school with free classes, and eventually a circus school. The various schools now have almost 2000 students, and after youngsters graduate from the circus school they're employeed by the organisation, for their nightly circus shows. Providing them with training and schooling as children, and then steady employment at a decent wage as adults. Profit made from things like the circus then go back into the community, funding primary schools, employing social workers to support rural communities, and provide scholarships for some.
Besides the amazing things this organisation is doing for local communities in Cambodia, it was also a really amazing circus show!
A different kind of Christmas
Our final few days in Siem Reap were over Christmas, and what a different Christmas it was! Obviously, Christmas isn't widely celebrated in Cambodia, though there were the odd Christmas trees or lights uparound the city. It also has been incredibly warm here, 32°+ most days. So we weren't feeling super Christmasy, but celebrated in our own way!
Firstly, Chris and I obviously have no room for gifts in our bags, nor do we want to spend our budget on Christmas presents for each other. But, we did decide on having a $5 budget to purchase some small, fun or whacky gifts from the local market. I found Chris some bamboo chopsticks, some dried mango and two iron on patches for the countries we'd visited. And Chris got me two lovely pairs of earrings, as I've been moaning that I wish I brought some with me!😅 We also did a Christmas food shop, which obviously looked quite different. We couldn't find any chocolate, nor any cheese at a reasonable price. However, we got plenty of cheap beers to enjoy, and settled for oreos, and artificial cheese cracker sandwiches as a compromise for chocolate, cheese and cracker 🤣
And for the big day itself, after a couple Facetimes with families, we hit a local Khmer BBQ and Hotpot buffet spot for our Christmas Dinner! We'd not tried one of these before, and honestly I felt quite intimidated by the idea. But was keen to try it!
We certainly went at it with non-local approach, getting 3 or 4 bits of meat and a handful of veggies in our first run. While locals had trays and trays of food stacked up ready to cook! Initially it was also quite stressful, cooking while eating, while stocking up on more food, while making sure nothing burnt or boiled over. But we soon found our feet, and confidence in the process, and thoroughly enjoyed it! We left so full we rolled home, and excited to try our next BBQ andHotpot experience!
And just like that, our first week in Siem Reap was over! I initially planned to also write about our short trip to Battambang in this post, but got a little carried away raving about how incredible Siem Reap is. And I think this post is already long enough! So I'll save that for next time!
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