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We arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia at noon on Monday. Our guesthouse picked us up for free from the airport. We settled in at Sam So guesthouse - it is even cheaper than our Koh Samui hotels at £7.76 per room per night and it includes breakfast! For breakfast we have ham and veg omelette, two pieces of toast with jam and butter and fruit (usually a banana and mango or dragon fruit) free refills of tea and coffee too. It is so much cooler here with highs of around 26 degrees in the day and lows of 17 in the evening (last time it was 35 degrees).
We have been revisiting old haunts from our last visit here in 2011. We had a thali at India Gate restaurant. We have also been to the Rick Stein recommended Pub Street Food place and Khmer Kitchen for traditional Khmer food - less spicy than Thai food and usually a stew like consistency - very tasty and always beautifully presented.
On Wednesday, we met up with our friend Steve Summerhayes - lovely to see him and good of him to travel over to meet up with us. He played Santa and gave us a Christmas card and a t-shirt each. My t-shirt is a parody of the Kit Kat ad "Have a break, have a tuk-tuk"
Siem Reap is known for its attentive tuk-tuk drivers. Every driver you pass will say "Sir, Madam, tuk-tuk? Visit to Temples?" Even if you have passed six of them in a row and declined their kind offers, driver number seven will still ask you if you need a tuk-tuk.
We see this as an amusing part of the experience and don't get too worked up about it. I was in a restaurant on Friday and walked through to the back where the ladies' toilets were. I passed the gents on the way and got an unfortunate glimpse of a man using the urinal - not my fault, he hadn't pulled the curtain across the doorway! Anyway, whilst recovering my embarrassment and before I had even passed, I heard him say "Hello Madam, you want tuk-tuk? You need tuk-tuk today?" OK, so he displayed great enterprise but he was also in danger of displaying something that would get him on the sex offenders' register in the UK! Thankfully he didn't follow me into the ladies' to get my reply.
We had a couple of boozy nights with Steve and I am still feeling a bit 'low' with the alcohol. We also had a lovely 'Christmas' buffet lunch with him on Friday before his flight. We will catch up with him again later in our trip.
The imaginatively named Pub Street is at the heart of the Siem Reap tourist scene - not as busy as it was last time. #It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas# every bar has its Christmas decorations up and the waiters are dressed in Santa hats. I'm pretty sure that many of them, having come from rural villages in the area, haven't the faintest idea what Christmas is. We have heard #Last Christmas# and #The Fairytale of New York# but there is a distinct lack of Noddy Holder and a welcome lack of Cliff Richard.
The town of Siem Reap has built up around the tourist scene of the ancient temples of Angkor. We have visited Angkor before but Paul now has a different camera and some new ideas, so we are doing the temples again - next week's blog will be more of a photo blog of the temples. Today I am off to the Angkor National museum (12 dollars) whilst Paul is out for a full day's templing. Paul is lagging a bit behind with this week's photos....
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