Asia Step 6 - Cambodia A long stay in Siem Reap

After we decided to leave Sihanoukville and to skip Phnom Penh, we take a night bus to Siem Reap. We spend 12 hours lying down on a hard bed, watching through the window some Cambodian scenes in the dark and trying to sleep.

When the bus finally stops for the last time as we're in Siem Reap, we wake up suddenly and face, anew, the waves of tuk tuk wanting a job from us. We pick one and at 7 on the morning observe quietly the town waking up. We find our hotel, Angkor Advisor Villa (in Siem Reap almost every accommodations are called "Angkor something")

Siem Reap looks charming, way cleaner than the cities we visited until now. A river splits the center up, surrounded by big trees, a lot of lights and decorations make the streets welcoming. It seems also richer than the rest of the country.

We already know we gonna stay longer in Siem Reap. We're tired of taking buses every three or four days, and there's a lot to do here. We feel immediately comfortable and take our time to discover.

You can find everything you want in Siem Reap. To eat you have the choice between plenty of cheap street food stalls, small and affordable restaurants and (but it does not concern us) classy and expensive ones. The food in itself is super tasty everywhere and diverse (Khmer food, Thai food, Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, Mexican, ...) There's few cafés as well with real coffee where you can spend hours while a long rain is falling. No lack of markets neither ! By day or night you can go through jewels, clothes, souvenirs, food or books stalls which are very colorful and sometimes accompany your walk with Khmer music and incense smell.

For the night, Siem Reap has its baby Khao San Road, Pub Street with plenty of restaurants, bars, clubs and obviously tourists. But the mood is more chill than in KSR and you cross a lot of couples or families enjoying Siem Reap nightlife.

As it's the most touristic place in Cambodia, due to the Temples of Angkor, it's also where the tuk tuk seem kind of obsessed to provoke you an headache asking nonstop for a ride. If you need, the markets sell T-shirts in different colors with written "No tuk tuk today & tomorrow". We weirdly cross numerous people wearing this.

There's gonna be several posts about our time in Siem Reap, this one is only about the global look of the town.