During Kyle's fall break, we did a quick trip to Cambodia with our new SG friends, the Kondo's. Flying Silk Air, we arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia and was whisked to the Raffles hotel by the waiting SUV. We were greeted with cold, peppermint-scented towels, and we checked in on nice couches with cold drinks. What a great way to start. We had drinks at the Elephant Bar - after SG, drinks everywhere else in the world are so cheap, even in a 5 star hotel. We ate dinner in the hotel's fancy Restaurant Le Grand for our first taste of "ancient royal Khmer cuisine." It tasted like a mix between Thai and Vietnamese, but don't tell them that. The service was fabulous but the food was only ok.
The next morning, we had a superb in-room breakfast. This made us feel more like royalty than the dinner the night before. Then we were off to a countryside bike ride. We were quite proud of Kyle making it through the tour without any problems since he hasn't had much experience riding bikes. The riding through the mud backroads were tough slogging, and at one point, I put my entire foot into a mud puddle. It took a lot of Zen thinking to displace the negative thoughts with "what an experience this is!" We asked the rhetorical question, "Why did the chicken cross the road (with her chicks)?" We saw a brace of ducks (or a "raft" of them while they were swimming). Skinny cows with flabby neck skin; water buffaloes; a bask of baby and grown crocodiles; and gorgeous lotus flowers accenting the green rice fields. Overall, quite an adventure, making us very happy to return to our gorgeous hotel, shower up, and take a tuk tuk to lunch at Aha restaurant on the busy Pub street. I went to the Angkor National Museum while ML and Kyle retreated to the hotel. We then hung out by the pool waiting for our friends to show up. When Paul and Kai arrived, we pressured them to join us for a sunset view of the temples, but the rain came during our trip out, so it was really just a roundtrip tuk tuk ride. We went to Khmer Kitchen for dinner because it was also recommended by the hotel. The food was mediocre and priced accordingly.
The next day was our temple-visiting day. We got a nice mini-van and English-speaking tour guide to take us to Angkor Wat. We entered through the back and thus was able to avoid the crowd of visitors until we got to the center of the complex. Angkor Wat is of course amazing. You must see it for yourself. Nuf said. Then we went to Ta Prohm, unofficially called the "tree temple," and even more commonly called, the "Tomb Raider temple." It was absolutely gorgeous, despite the hordes of tourists. We went back to the hotel, dropped off the kids who were dying for room service and internet access, and the adults went to the very cool Chanrey Tree restaurant on the recommendation from the tuk tuk driver. After dropping ML off at the spa and Paul off at the hotel, I continued on to Bayon temple, famous for its 216 gigantic stone faces with their "mysterious" smiles. I returned to Angkor Wat by 4pm, walking around from the front to the back via the side corridor, then back up to the middle, in search of a good photo opp with the sun setting. From the top central tower, I got a nice pic of the temple's shadow cast on the jungle. I made my way back to the reflecting pools in the front gardens to contemplate the majesty of the temple while the sun set behind me. Though the red glow of sunset never came, I did enjoy meditating on the library steps as dusk came. That evening, we enjoyed the Raffles BBQ buffet while watching the dance show.
On the last day of our trip, we lounged around the room in the morning, waiting for Kyle to wake up. We went to the Nest for a final, delicious lunch, another good recommendation from the tuk tuk driver. Then we went to Tonle Sap lake boat tour to see how the poor Cambodians and Vietnamese lived on the water. The highlight was feeding a live catfish to the snapping crocodiles in the pit below. Finally, we went to the Angkor silk farm, where we were all amazed at how much silk could be spun from the simple silk worm and at the ingenuity of weaving silk into the fine patterns. It was interesting to see the ladies roll on their legs the tassles at the end of a scarf.
Overall it was a great trip. It was exciting to go to a new place, experience the famed Angkor temples, dine at fine restaurants, stay at the Grand hotel, bike ride through the countryside, and learn a bit of the Cambodian culture and history from our tour guide. Cambodia bid us farewell with a beautiful sunset while we boarded our plane back to Singapore.
