A trip to Cambodia with the same friend I had visited Vietnam with the first time came about after optimistic plans for Turkey fell through. Direct flights not available, we flew in via long layovers in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur reaching there between late morning and early afternoon.
With a full night of travel, the priority was shower, lunch and sleep as soon as we checked into our hostel. The hostel we stayed at was named Onederz and it has pretty much become my favorite hostel so far. Obsessively clean, something for all personality-types, spacious and an all-night bar.
Piece of advice - everyone speaks English and uses USDs so don't even worry about. Do worry about getting overcharged by tuktuk drivers. Have the hostel send someone to pick you up from the airport.
Waking up late in the evening we went over to Pub street, found a place to exchange a couple of damaged dollar notes and found a place with live music and cheap beer to pass the time
One of our biggest learnings from the Vietnam trip was a year-end vacation should be relaxing not leave you wondering what the f#$% you were thinking. As a result, we took the call early on to limit our trip to just 2 places in the week. The second day was when that decision started paying off, as we had a lazy morning, a khmer lunch at the hostel and a couple of beers.
The hostel had organized a bicycle tour through the countryside around Siem Reap during the sunset. A group of about 20 left in a single file through the streets of the outer city, and to the ruins of an old Hindu temple with a Buddhist monastery adjacent to it. After a crash course in Cambodian history and the state of the country's politics from our guide, we proceeded through dirt tracks to stop at a row of cottages serving food and drink overlooking paddy fields and lotus ponds to watch the sun go down. A quick drink and meal later we cycled back in the dark to the hostel. Going back to Pub Street, we had a steak dinner at a fantastic restaurant before calling it a night
Planned our temple run for our 3rd morning. Waking up at 4 am, we got picked up from our hostel by a tour operator, reached early enough to pick up our passes within 10 mins after which we got dropped off in front of Angor Vat main temple complex. Everybody crowded in front of the ponds for the famous sunrise photo which, to be honest was every bit as breathtaking, if one found a way to ignore the throngs of people with their cameras out.
The tour was well organized with a knowledgeable guide who ran a very tight operation. He regaled us with stories from Cambodian history and Hindu / Buddhist mythology while letting us wander off on our own as well when we needed to. We visited 4 sites - Angor Wat (the one on the postcards), Bayon (the one with the faces), Ta Prohm (the one in Tomb Raider) and Angkor Thom (the one no one cared about) - before heading back to the hostel for lunch. After a long afternoon nap, we headed up to the roof for the hostel pool party. After a swim in some truly filthy waters (the party had been on for 8 hours at that point) we headed back to Pub Street with some hostelmates where we caught up with a former college-mate who also happened to be in town. After some pub-hopping we ended the night with some fried ice cream rolls.
We didn't much of an agenda on our last day in Siem Reap and so had a chill afternoon which included getting a massage at one of the finer establishments in the city followed by some trinket-shopping and an Indian dinner. We turned in early for our flight early next morning
Setting off from Siem Reap before dawn we caught our flight to the capital Phnom Penh for the last leg of our journey. Reaching the Mad Monkey hostel around 9 am we sat around waiting for our room to be given to us till 2 pm. That did mean that we ended up getting utterly smashed and we pretty much passed out as soon we checked in. Waking up late in the evening (we realized we had missed the pub crawl) we walked over to cluster of upscale restaurants and pubs where we had a couple of cocktails before heading to another spot next to Cafe Love which stayed open all night. It was there that we saw the pub crawl from our hostel wind up.
The second day in PP started off with a surprise as I hungover walked out of my room to see a junior from my b-school sitting at the bar who, it turned out, was staying there as well. While she headed out for the grim genocide tour, I waited around for my friend to wake up by sitting around in the restaurant with my book and some great khmer rice and curry.
We signed up for the sunset tour that the hostel had organized and we (a group of 7) set off in tuktuks to the banks of the Mekong river around 5 pm. We spent the next hour and a half going up and down the river on the upper decks of commuter ferries watching the sun go down behind the city. As the dusk settled, we walked along the riverside, drinking beers and sampling insect tapas (present company not partaking). We saw the royal palace and other things as we made our way back on foot back to the hostel. After drinking in the hostel lounge for a couple of hours we headed back to the same place as the previous night at midnight and then picked up some beer on the way back to the hostel from a supermarket which we drank till the wee hours of dawn
Last day of the trip, we started off with the extremely harrowing genocide tour that had been organized by the hostel. I will not delve into the details of the Cambodian genocide and the relics of atrocities that I witnessed that day at the S21 Torture Prison and the Killing Fields as it would be in some sense be trivializing to do so on a travel blog but those places and the stories are some of the most painful I have ever heard. It is indeed a tribute to the Cambodian people and their spirit to have been able to bounce back from an experience like that.
After a quick lunch, my friend went to take a nap while I proceeded to another great spa for a traditional khmer massage. Refreshed and upbeat, we headed up for the NYE celebrations in the hostel lounge before ringing in the New Year at Cafe Love. After midnight we spent another full night sitting outside the hostel with supermarket beers.
We started off early next morning back to the airport and back to India
