Our travels today are uneventful. To the airport in good time, to the gate with no lines, to Cambodia without a struggle. Upon arrival, I'm glad I got eVisa's ahead of time. It's a simple process you can complete online, and it let's you walk straight to immigration, instead of standing in a long line of people who did not want to pay for a small electronic submittal fee. Of course, once through immigrations, we wait with some of those same people for our luggage.

Interesting upon arrival is that you can hardly be scammed by taxi drivers. There is a state-run taxi office who takes your destination address, provides you the driver and charges you the published standard amount. In our case $10 (dollars are the expected currency for foreigners). Feels kind of nice not to have to haggle for this.

We are welcomed to the hotel, and although we are way early for check in they have a room available and gladly take us on. Smiles and friendliness all around. I like Siem Reap.

We have three days here. This day, and then a tour 8a-6p on day two and 4a-3p on day three. We use the 4th day to fly to Chiang Mai. So we do what we can day one. We are taken to a few stores by our airport driving (hey, people are enterprising here, too). The first store is a high-end museum-grade "store". Our personal shopper welcomes us at the door and explains about the sandstone sculptures, the silver-looking items that are really metal (he explains) and the beautifully cut emeralds he has in his store. We learn of silk sourced from worms and, unique to Cambodia, bamboo. We see a mesmerizing, large jade ship. He is quick to explain how he would pack it for door-to-door service with DHL, then names the price, and we politely smile and move on.

We visit a local silk and a local silver shop, both family run. The ladies are so nice and practically beg for the sale. NYE behind us, it has gotten much quieter. We also visit a local market. It may not be fair to compare, but here I go anyway. Not nearly as impressive in diversity and size as what we've seen in Bangkok, it does look more organized, and to Liz is looks as if the really cheap stuff isn't for sale here (I didn't particularly notice). And as the market is closing down, new stalls are put up on the periphery for evening sales. Merchandizing is constant in Siem Reap.

We have a fantastic dinner at an artful restaurant by the dinner arranged by the hotel. Liz fish, me (4) ribs with eggplant. Delicious and delightful wrapped in one.

And that wraps day 1 in Cambodia. Our impressions are that this is a much more laidback environment than Bangkok. It is a much smaller scale, and calmer than the big city of Bangkok. Yet at the same time, it feels like we've already seen the key highlights on the first day. We'll see tomorrow if that's true.