October 4th - 7th Siem Reap, Cambodia

"Angkor Wat"

Siem Reap is one of the most tourist friendly place I've been to thus far. The city is great for tourists. All the transportation, food, and tuk tuk prices are standardized, taking away the fear of getting ripped off. It didn't matter if we took a shuttle or a taxi from the airport or hotel arranged transportation, it was all the same price. The cool thing about this trip was they used USD, even their exchange rate to their Cambodian Riel was standardized. Don't bother changing your $ for Riel at the airport cause you will get ripped off like I did. Just have a lot of $1 USD.

On the first day we took a trip to see how the locals lived on water. This massive body of water flows over like a massive lake during the months of September to February. A lot of the locals will move with the water levels. The little bushes sticking out from the top of the water are actually trees. As the water level retreats, the locals will move their floating houses, schools, farms, etc. out to where they water takes them. The massive rise in water levels also explains why there are a lot of yellow fresh dirt on the roads, as most of the roads are submerge under water for a good few months of the year. We got a chance to visit school students and surprisingly a lot of places are Korean sponsored.

Angkor Wat is the major attraction in Siem Reap. We got to visit other historical temples around well Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom is the larger of the two complex. Angkor Thom has a number of temples on its site, while Angkor Wat is the largest single temple in the world to date. I got a chance to climb a few of these small steps, getting to the top was exhausting enough, until I realize I still had to come down.

The most enjoyable part of the city was definitely the food. It is very cheap considering this is one of the most visited place on the planet. $1 or $2 can already get u dinner of course if u want to go gourmet a la carte, then $22 will do including drinks :) and I'm talking about some serious BBQ, FYI Kangaroo tasted the best. Pub street is the place to visit. It is packed with local tourist police and fenced off at night making pedestrian traffic only.