Narrations

The last day and the flight was at 12pm. In order to shop more they forced me up at 8.30am...

This is what you get for watching 8 Mile till 2am

So last minute shopping and I was looking for souvenirs for the guys back home.

Hanging meat


Vegetables and stuff

This is a girl we met at the central market. She's Chinese and speaks teow chiew too. I think she's an immigrant and she's married to a local and speaks fluent Khmer, the Cambodian language. So lot's of cheap stuff from her :D

After some recommendations we stopped by for local beef noodles. It was ok and the soup was sweet. Nice balls of meat though D:

When that's done it's time to go home. The last pic with David at the airport. And then it was goodbye Cambodia

This is not voyeur! Just something I thought was "interesting" . All the air stewardess of AirAsia are very well endowed~ But they wear too heavy of makeup. Yerr

Passing immigrations with the new passport is a breeze now

Slot in your passport and put your thumb on the sensor and you're done

Home greets us with showers

That's the end of my little trip to humble Cambodia. I would go back there again if there's a chance and I would really like to spend at least two days at the temples. Those are really beautiful places.

Here are most of the pics for this trip. Here are the pick of the crop, my fav pics.

It's the last day of my three day trip in Siem Reap. Got up at about 8 and today we are visiting Angkor Wat. Actually I'm only looking forward to this part of the trip. You will understand why at the end of this post. Nothing much I can say to describe what I saw so I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Entrance into the temple area

The first temple we visited was Banteay Srei. Claimed to be one of the most beautiful temple and filled with intricate carved motifs.

Banteay Srei


Imagine beautiful sculptures like this in every corner of the temple

Then we went to Bayon, temple of many faces.

Bayon


With the family outside Bayon


Everywhere was faces like these staring down at you

Then we stopped by for lunch at a local hawker and proceeded to Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is huge. We walked the span of two causeways and went thru two gateways just to reach the inner temple. That's about almost a kilometre of walking. The whole place is surrounded by a moat almost a football field wide.

My fav pic the whole trip. Monks leaving the temple as I entered

These are called apsaras. Heavenly maidens sent down as rewards for kings and warriors

There are apsaras everywhere along the walls of the temple. The interesting thing is every apsara is different to one another, being the hair, the pose, the facial expression. Everyone of them is different. In the middle of everything is the inner temple. You need to climb a steep set of stairs to get up. The steps are worn and slippery. Luckily they installed a railing to the sides but that doesn't make it any scarier.

Sis climbing up to the inner temple(sorry bout the sideway pic)

While up there we saw a Korean filming crew

The actor and actress

What a weird place to do a Korean serial in. Couldn't recognise anyone there so must be not famous one la..

I forgot the name of this temple but they called it Tomb Raider temple

Yes this is where they filmed the Tomb Raider movie starring Angelina Jolie. The temple is being reclaimed by the forest and giant trees eat away at the walls. Looks adventurous.

A tree outside the temple. Got female counterpart ah?

The pics I took are really not the best so you can't really see the beauty of the places. But believe me the places are really beautiful and you will wonder how they built them over 800 years ago.

Angkor at night

It's evening and we had to track up a hill to a hilltop temple to look at the sunset.

A huge crowd like this gathers everday on the top

Voyeur hehe~ chun Japanese tourist

The sun is going down

There are plenty more temples but we managed to cover only the more famous ones. David says you can stay here for a week and not finish exploring everything.

So back to the hotel we go and dinner at another hawker stall.

Ikan amok

The kangkung you see is called morning glory here in Cambodia. We were expecting to eat purple flowers when we ordered it. And it turns out that Cambodians only eat the stalk and not the leaves. So we had a plateful of kangkung stalks. They feed the leaves to pigs (they rear pigs in villages) because the stalks can be kept longer. So what about here in Malaysia? Total opposites.
Finished we dinner we went for traditional massage. My first.

Quite painful...

The day is done and we stopped by a convenience shop before going back to the hotel. Got some Angkor Beer...

So cheap...and tastes like Tiger

Back at the hotel I got a gentle reminder....

That's right don't do it you bastards. haha.

The computer have been causing me problems lately...also I've been busy hanging out with Crew during the weekend, doing what guys do best; waste time haha..
Anyway here's my second day at Siem Reap.

According to plan we are bound for the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh which is about four hours away from Siem Reap. So we had to get up at 5.30 so we could be there early and spend the whole day there.

This is 6am taken from my hotel. Bright!

On the way we passed through villages and the road was small and bumpy. There are no highways in this country. The driver had to hon at those bikers and smaller cars as a sign to get out of the way so he can overtake them. Seems something of a norm for them. It was quite annoying but I was happily deep in slumber.
The first stop was the royal palace.

The road leading to the palace

Group pic at!behind us is the throne room

The famous silver pagoda


Admin building and some chateau the French gave to the king. Entry restricted


I'm guessing this is the temple. Entry restricted

There were lot's of individual building in a big walled compound but most of them were restricted areas. So basically you're paying 20USD to look at a few buildings that no one lives in anymore(the king lives in another palace). Yay.

Spent almost two hours there and then it was my favourite time, lunch time. We were taken to a local restaurant.

I have a bad feeling about this...so cheat restaurant?


But I wasn't feeling cheated when the food came..!

The food was actually nice. Very typical chinese. But what really stood out were their drinks

Cambodian kopi susu ais. Superb la~ I would go back there for a glass of this, seriously. It's that good. Although a little sweet, but it puts all the mamak kopi we have here to shame. Very kau! I reckon it even tastes better than all those StarBucks frappucino crappucino haha...

They have teh ais too, but not as good as the kopi :D


Pops looking mighty satisfied

The bill came to about 2USD a person. Cheap considering all the stuff we ordered.

Cambodian police

Rich dude's house. The economic divide here is BIG where the rich are really rich and the poor are really poor. If I remember correctly David told us you buy houses here with gold. And houses such as this can go up to about 700 thousand USD in value.

Next was Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

The museum was a school before the war.


Pictures of the dead.


Skulls dug out from mass graves.

If you didn't already know, Cambodia was ravaged by civil war when communist influence was at it's highest. Many were forced to labour and died as a result of overwork and also torture. They were liberated when Vietnam forces marched in and drove out the communists but in return Vietnam also claimed much of their lands resulting in a smaller Cambodia that we know today.

Now for shopping.

Russain Market. Look at all those shoes


Mom looking through stuff


The dude's selling barbecued squids

The place was crowded and it was a steam room in there. I bough two pairs of shoes and a sports t-shirt for a grand total of 30USD. Mm hmm.
It's six in the evening and David was rushing us back because of the notorious traffic jam would take us two hours to get out of the city.

Now I know why...no traffic lights!!

It was dark by the time we got on the road back to Siem Reap. David was driving like crazy honing every bike he sees on the road as a warning to them. Then we stopped by for dinner at an inn. No pics cause it's just another chinese eatery. What was interesting is they sold...

...crickets!Fried and all crispy and juicy

It's their local snack and it's big business for them when they export these stuff to Thailand. They catch them by the tonnes in kampungs with special nets fixed below blue neon lights when the season arrives.

You can see these lights stretching for miles as the villagers cash in on some extra income and also some snack for themselves.
We got back to the hotel at about 10 pm and went straight to bed after another tiring day.
Look out for the third and last day soon :D








Off-topic:
I had to edit and filter some stuff on my previous posts because someone is being over sensitive and I feel sad for the person who has to put up with that burden. So to you-know-who-you-are, I again dedicate this song to you.
Sigh.