Cambodian orphanage and the temples of Siem Reap



1st day breakfast

 OK, I am finally posting my trip to Cambodia, which happened at the end of January, 2011. First off, the trip came about after some email conversation with Mendy. Mendy is a Skywest employee that goes to Cambodia to take supplies (children books and toiletries) to an orphanage, OSD orphanage. She heads over there a few times a year to deliver the supplies so I asked if she would mind if I tagged along. Honestly one of my primary reasons of wanted to go was to get experience with international non-rev travel with someone who has. I did pick up some stuff for the orphanage, acrylic gold paint, some toothbrushes and toothpaste, but very little compared with what Mendy had. On a side note it looks like one of the best places to get supplies is the dollar store. I wish I had thought to look there as I would have been able to take more.

So, packing for the trip, I was trying to just take carry ons. But, the gold paint came in 4 oz tubes. So I bought some 3oz containers to put the paint in and loaded up my quart plastic bag. I had this bag stuffed with five 3 oz containers, travel sized toothpaste, shampoo, shaving cream, and bug spray. But, once having everything packed I decided to check the bag anyway. So, I only had to carry my backpack.

The trip started when I finished my night shift the morning of the 24th of January. I went directly to the airport (SLC) trying to get to LAX where I would meet Mendy for the first time. Arriving at the gate I see the screen showing 10 seats open with me being number 11 on the standby list, great way to start of the trip I thought to myself. Well, after nervously waiting around I ended up making the flight, a good thing as I only had two flights I could catch to make the connecting flight to NRT.
I had a 3-hour layover in LAX and met up with Mendy about an hour before the flight took off. We talked about some of her previous trips while waiting for our seat assignments, Yes, business class for the 11-hour flight to NRT. We had a quick one hour layover in NRT for the flight to BKK which we ended up in coach for the 7-hour flight, arriving around midnight on the 25th. While waiting to load the plane a guy (Weston) behind us asked if we were Americans and where we were going. We told him what our plans were with going to Siem Reap via bus and taxi. 

Mendy and Weston in Tuk-Tuk

Weston’s plans where to backpack mostly around Thailand with a possible side trip to Siem Reap to see the temples. Because he wanted to see the Angkor Wat temple complex he asked if he could join us on our trip to Siem Reap, we said that would be no problem.

Wednesday the 26th- Once in BKK the plan was to wait for an 8am bus that would take us to Rongklua Market that is next to the border crossing and a few kilometers from the town of Aranyaprathet. But, I had downloaded some information from tales of asia and Seat61. Tales of Asia indicated there was a 3:30am bus from the Northern Bus Terminal a.k.a. Morchit Bus Terminal. So instead of the 8-hour wait at the airport we opted to taking a taxi from the airport to Morchit Bus Terminal for the 3 ½ hour wait. The taxi to Morchit costs 390 baht ($13) + road toll fees of 80 baht ($2.70) and it took about ½ hour. We waited at the bus terminal for the window (#31) to open, while waiting we started to see a line form. After awhile the line was getting longer and so we looked to find out they were waiting for the same ticket window to open. Luckily we ended up getting in line as I think we got the last three seats on the bus at a cost of 212 baht ($7.10) each as I would not want to stand for the 4-5 hour bus ride. No issues with the bus ride and it took about 4 ½ hours to get to the border market.
　
As soon as we stepped off the bus the touts started hounding us for rides to the border crossing. We probably paid too much but we took two tuk-tuk's (small covered trailer pulled by a motorcycle) to the crossing at 50 baht ($1.70) each. If there is a next time it is worth no more than 20 baht as on the return trip it was only 80 baht for the 6km to Aranyaprathet. We were dropped of near a table with a couple of people I assumed wanted to ‘help’ us to get through the border, we did not stick around to find out. According to the tales of Asia website this could have been a scam to have you pay for paperwork you do not really need, but the people did not really push anything on us. Since we arrived early there was not much for crowds trying to cross the border. The hardest part of the border crossing was trying to figure out where you needed to go. We found the building on the Thailand side to get through to the Cambodia side. Again, on the Cambodia side we were looking for the Visa on Arrival office as Mendy and Weston needed visas’. I was able to purchase an e-visa online that costs $5 more than the $20 visa on arrival. Weston also did not have any photo’s of himself and I believe it cost him an extra 100 Baht ($3.33). The e-visa was not really needed as there were no lines but if it was busy it might have saved a lot of time. After the visa on arrival office we needed to find the immigration window to get the passports stamped, again a little confusing to find as there does not seem to be any visible signs to follow.
Once through the crossing we had a young gentleman approach us saying he was with the tourist center and was there to help with transportation to the transit building. Since I thought I read something about this and a free bus to the transit center we had him help us. Sure enough, got on a free bus to a big transit center where you can catch a taxi/van/bus to Siem Reap. Not sure how much all the options cost but the taxi costs $12 per person. Actually a taxi costs $48 ($12 x 4 people), so with three of us it was $16 each. Note that the taxi's will take you to guest houses that they deal with, since we already had a hotel in mind we told them to take us there, they were not liking that but our ride did get us to the hotel we wanted in about two hours. We did not have reservations but rooms were available at Ancient-Angkor hotel. One of the rooms went for $15 and the other for $20, not sure of the differences except there were two of us in the $20 room while Mendy had her own room. There are cheaper rooms in town, we talked to a couple with an $8 room but with no A/C and $12 with A/C. Mendy had stayed at the hotel before and knew it was clean, it also had a small pool to cool off in, not big enough to do laps.
I think we relaxed a couple of hours since I had been traveling about 36 hours. We then headed to town, only a few blocks away and easily walkable. We ate and walked around the market, then went back to the hotel for a little while and then headed to the night market to look at all the goods. During this time around town we decided to head to the temples in the morning. We actually had Mendy's normal tuk-tuk driver Mr. Narong ( narong24@yahoo.com ) see us walking by and we mentioned we wanted to head to the temples in the morning. He had no problems with meeting with us in the morning.
 

Pub Street, Siem Reap, Cambodia



Thursday the 27th, It’s now 5:30am and we are in Mr. Narong's tuk-tuk heading to the temples. After stopping at the entrance to pay the $20 for a day pass we entered the complex heading for Phnom Bakheng for sunrise photos’ as its on top of a hill with partial views of Angkor Wat (this is the same spot that Laura Croft-tomb raider- landed on when she 1st landed in Cambodia in the movie).

Phnom Bakheng

 

Phnom Bakheng




It was cloudy so there was not much of a sunrise for photo's, I think I got two shots with partial sun in them.

After sunrise we headed to Angkor Wat to walk through the temple.


Here I am at Angkor Wat

 With a bright sky it was hard to get good photos’, to get the temple exposure good the sky would be blown out and having the sky good the temples are to dark. I put up with the blown out skies to save the temples and not wanting to do any multi exposure images.

After Angkor Wat we headed toward Angkor Thom and the Bayon. The Bayon temple is one with many, many faces carved into the stone.

The Bayon, Angkor Wat temple complex




The Bayon

 Then walked along the terrace of the elephants,


Terrace of the Elephants

 viewed the Phimeanakas from the terrace and headed over to the twelve towers of prasats suor prat.


One of the Twelve Towers of Prasats Suor Prat

 We then walked through a few temples before headed over to Ta Prohm temple.


Ta Prohm Temple

 Ta Prohm temple is the one with all the spung tree roots growing over and through the stones of the temple, this is another location that was in Tomb Raider.



Doorway where Laura Croft Tomb Raider picked Jasmine flower

 Unfortunately it is difficult to take photos without other tourists or ropes blocking off areas and now some cranes as they are doing some work on the temple.

rope fences around many areas of Ta Prohm

Our last temple for the day was Banteay Kdei, here we had a little kid follow us for some distance trying to get us to buy something, I was surprised on how far she followed us before giving up.

Anyway, a very short tour of the temples. You could spend days here getting photos’, and there are other temples outside this complex to check out if you had the time. After Banteay Kdei we headed back to town to get something to eat as we have not eaten anything all day. After eating Mendy went for a nap while Weston and I decided to head to the floating village.

one of 170 floating villages of Tonle Sap lake

The floating village is on Tonle Sap lake, and this is only one of about 170 floating villages on the lake. Arriving at the dock you find out it is government ran and a tour boat costs $15 per person. Our boat had only Weston and I with a tour guide, who spoke good English and a driver. As we were heading out a boat startled us by coming up to ours and someone jumping into our boat, but it ended up being someone trying to sell water or soft drinks. We headed a couple kilometers to the main body of the lake and toured around the village. While out in the main body, we noticed a little girl at maybe seven years old paddling around in a large steel bowl finally catching up with us just to ask for money.

little girl begging for money

The tour guide recommended to us not to give money as that only encourages their families to continue sending their children out to make money and not go to school.  Would never had expected to see anything like this.  The bowl is cracked and she is paddling with one hand and scooping water out with the other.

The tour guide wanted us to see the floating school and suggested we stop by a floating market to buy school supplies for them. We were fine with this until we see the prices that they wanted for pens and paper. Because of the high price, we declined on purchasing anything. We were then taken to a floating restaurant/market as the guide probably gets a kickback for bringing them people. Walked around and went to an upper deck to take some photo's. After that it was back to the dock for the tuk-tuk back to the hotel.

On the way back we stopped at Mr. Narongs house to meet his wife and two daughters.

Mr. Narongs family and one other relative

This is mostly due to Narong's family basically being an adopted family of Mendy's. While there, Weston and I decided to invite them out to dinner. We walked around their property while waiting for them to get ready. We then headed to the hotel to let Mendy know the plans we made. It ended up being a wonderful night as the Narong's took us to a local carnival where we had good local food and their kids were able to play on some rides.

all of us eating dinner at local carnival

We also played the pop-the-balloon with darts game to win the kids some stuffed animals. They also had a Ferris wheel that would no way be safe for the U.S. It spun at least four times faster than ones in the U.S. making it a little scary. While getting dropped off at the hotel we made plans to meet again at 9am to head to the orphanage to drop off the supplies.

Friday the 28th, Weston, Mendy and I met in town to have breakfast. Mendy likes this place for the banana pancakes, so I had one. They were very good, as they do also have good bananas’. Then after pancakes and mixed fruit smoothies we met up with Narong to head off to the orphanage. We had to pass through the main entrance of the Angkor temple complex to get there. Once at the orphanage we met Mr. Leng who runs the orphanage and Mrs. Shirley who teaches there.

a group shot of us with the kids and teachers

We took a tour of the property and then met the children. Mendy then opened up here luggage that included books, toothpaste, toothbrushes, frisbee's, jump ropes and more. The kids were throwing the frisbee's around and jumping rope in no time. We also checked out all the paintings that the kids paint and we all bought at least one painting and post cards taking pictures of the children who painted them. After a couple of hours we headed back to town for lunch.

After lunch and not wanting to sit around Weston and I had Mr. Narong take us around the countryside in his tuk-tuk that ended up being very nice.

Mr. Narong met up with us for a tour of the countryside with a cooler of beer.

While touring the countryside and trying to figure out what to do for sunset we came across this.

local countryside gas station

A nice and safe way to sell gasoline, notice the Johnnie Walker bottles.

We remembered seeing some steps heading up a hill on the way to the floating village so we headed there to climb the steps and get to the top. It was quite a climb up a road after climbing the stairs. We were questioned once about what we were doing as this is normally a temple that had an entrance fee. But because of the time they let us on through. This temple is Phnom Krom, it was just about sunset but it was cloudy so no real sunset. The temple was very interesting at this time of night as it was getting dark, the temples had the haunted house look to them and there were bats squeaking away inside the temples.

The haunted looking temples of Phnom Krom

I was hoping that the bats would leave the temples while we were there as that would add to the effect. This is a spot to check out for sunset if you did not decide to see the temples at sunset. It seemed we had to have climbed 2,000 feet and had very good views of the landscape below seeing all the houses lining the road from town to the lake, all the rice fields and some of the lake. We mentioned to Narong that this would be a place to recommend for tourist if they wanted something else to see besides the temple complex. After the hike back down the tuk-tuk in the dark we headed to the hotel to get Mendy for our last night on the town.
　
That night we had one hour massages and dinner, walked around pub street with some last minute shopping heading back to the room around midnight so we could get a good night sleep for our 5am wake up call to head back to Bangkok. The night’s sleep was terrible as it was past 1am after showers and getting everything packed up. Then dogs seemed to bark for hours (did not happen the other nights or if it did I slept through it) and noisy drunks slamming doors and screaming up and down the hallways (again did not hear this on other nights). So what was maybe two hours of sleep we were up heading out the door.
　
Saturday the 29th. We met with Mr. Narong at about 5:20am, and he lined up a taxi driver for us for the ride to the border. The direction from Siem Reap to Poipet (border town) is not regulated like Poipet-Siem Reap was and the taxi was $25. The taxi drove a little fast for comfort but we made the border in less than two hours. Again, it was a little confusing getting through the border but we made it through and took a tuk-tuk from the Thai side of the border to Aranyaprathet for 80 baht ($2.70). We timed it perfect as we unloaded from the tuk-tuk, bought our tickets at 207 baht each ($6.90) and the bus was there ready to go. The bus was 5 baht cheaper as we left from town and not the border market. After a little more than five hours (traffic toward Bangkok slowed us down) we reached a bus terminal. We had no idea what terminal this was and the only thing we knew was we were going to head toward Khao San Road. As we unloaded from the bus we had taxi drivers jumping at us for a ride and one had us following him out to his car. He wanted 850 baht (over $28) to get to Khao San Road, as we did not know where we were we did not know if that was good or not. But, after talking between ourselves and Weston mentioning he did not like how forceful the taxi driver was he said we did not want the ride and went back to the bus station. At the station we now see the metered taxi line and asked how much, the metered taxi ended up costing less than 100 baht (just over $3) so $25 less than the non-metered taxi. After about ½ hour we were being dropped off at Khao San Road.
Khao San Road-similar but much, much bigger than pub street in Siem Reap, is the main starting/ending point for most backpackers in Thailand. Lots of people, bars, restaurants, vendors and hostels. We walked down the street as Weston checked on prices for a room. He was staying the night and leaving on a 14 hour bus ride toward the beaches the next morning. Mendy and I were headed toward the airport sometime that night for a 5:30 a.m. flight out. Weston finally found a hostel he liked and they also had a storage room that Mendy and I could drop off our bags while we walked around at 10 baht per bag. After an hour or so Weston took off to meet up with a friend of a friend who lived in Bangkok prior to his trip to the beaches and Mendy and I walked around checking out the merchandise and food that was around. We left for the airport around 9pm as we were getting tired of standing. We were going to catch a cab, but during our walking around we found an express bus to the airport for 150 baht ($5) each. With only two of us this seemed to be the lowest cost, maybe with 3 a taxi would be about the same. There were only three people on the bus, including us, for the direct ride to the airport. Remember this if I go back as you could take the express bus back to Khao San Road.

Arrived to the airport about 10pm for a long wait for the 5:30am flight. Now Sunday the 30th-As time approached and revenue passengers headed toward the gate it looked like there were seven people waiting on standby. They originally took 3 to the gate and waited to see if any other seats were available. After a little while one of the three returned so only 2 of 7 standby's made the flight. Great, now what. Well, we had benefits on United and the United flight left in a couple of hours. Another couple had to get zed tickets on multiple flight to try and make it out, then there was someone on a buddy pass so they were stuck with flying Delta. Mendy and I found an internet café and listed ourselves on the United flight, while waiting to be cleared the other couple with zed tickets also showed up. All four of us made the United flight to NRT. Once in NRT we had a two hour layover for a flight to LAX, the other couple ended up having to go out through customs to get to the Delta ticket counter so they could get some more zed tickets to try and get to Newark. We saw them on the way to a Continental gate that seemed they had seats open-we do not know if they made the flight or not. We were able to make the NRT to LAX united flight. I ended up getting seat E on both legs BKK-NRT, NRT-LAX on a 777 that is the center seat in a row of 5. It was not as good at the business class from LAX to NRT but we were at least on the plane. Thank goodness for the jet stream as we had a 216 mph tailwind and the plane was flying at 780mph that took a total of three hours off the flight time from BKK to LAX.
Mendy and I went our separate ways after customs where I ended up having some troubles. After going through customs instead of going through a small security checkpoint that I thought was for people with checked bags I headed out through a door that ended up in the baggage area. Great, now I am outside security. I went up to security (in the Delta section) with a United printout I had from NRT and they would not let me through. Some things I wish I took on the trip-my netbook so I could list if there was a wi fi connection, my work ID badge and my sell phone with the 1800 number for listing on delta on the phone. So, I walk up to a delta counter and they said they were baggage check in only and could not list me for flights. Also, no one could give me the 1800 number and no one knew where I could go to list for a flight. Wondered around a little bit trying to figure out what to do then headed to another delta counter about 100 feet from the 1st counter I went to and they ended up being able to list me for a flight so I could get a pass through security. I had about 1 ½ hours to wait for the Delta flight to SLC and made 1st class arriving around 4pm on Sunday the 30th.