Siem Reap, Cambodia - travel notes

Siem Riep has a nice city frame, a historic center and an excellent open restaurant alley, but Pub Street, souvenir stalls and offers for a tuktuk dominate. New construction has no architectural regulations: tacky steel and glass sprawling strips are on the rise.

Siem Reap has been an unfavorable place for several reasons, many steming from what I call "the one person problem", whereby hotel rooms and taxis are made for multiple people and that is reflected in the cost, which a solo traveler can't split up or pay for on an individual basis. This makes youth hostels with bunk beds a good option, and makes me nab other travelers at arrival places to share cab fare.

The bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap (6 hours, $5) dropped us off on the outskirts of town uneccessarily. When it pulled in, they blocked the door, trapping us inside for a few minutes so the tuktuk drivers had time to grab our luggage from the under-bus storage. We had no choice but to take a tuktuk to town. This reminds me of the taxi lobby in the Bay Area which blocked BART from being extensed to the SF airport until the Naughties, and why the light rail in San Jose runs 5 blocks parallel to the SJ airport, farther than most people would want to drag a suitcase.

I was able to share a tuktuk with a German couple, and it was only $1 each, but it is still shitty to feel trapped, and the bus could have stopped in town, where everyone wants to be. I happened to mention to the German couple that I paid $5 for my bus ticket, which is commonly booked through your hotel. The German's stayed in a more expensive hotel in Phnom Penh which over-charged them for their bus tickets, $12 each.

The first youth hostel I tried was full. I found another one next door which was nearly empty, except for 3 Chinese girls who didn't even say hello, and had loud construction noise next door ($6/night). The innkeeper said he expected to be full on Saturday so I would have to seek lodging elsewhere on subsequent nights.

My first night, I tried to book a sunrise tour of Angkor Wat for the day after, planning 1 rest day inbetween. The past 4 nights I've had insomnia or wild dreams (a side effect of my malaria pills), and a typical 5 hours of sleep at most. I never make plans ahead of time, but it sounded like a good idea if youth hostels are full and I want to take a tour on a Saturday. I booked an all day tour for $15, haggling the tour office down from $20. They described a bus with 20 people that would visit 6 sights over the whole day. Awesome, I need to meet new friends. They got the date wrong and the hostel Innkeeper woke me up 7 hours later, at 5:30am, with a tour guide and driver waiting for me. I was startled and yelled "Fuck!" when I saw the Inkeeper next to my bed, likely disturbing the 3 sleeping, mute girls from China.
After some discussion downstairs with the tour guide, I rolled with it, got dressed and walked out to the bus. It turned out to be a car with a driver and I was the only passenger. The guide said I needed to pay another $20 for the entry ticket. Only 2 blocks away, my gut decided to say no to the whole thing, and we drove back. I would discuss it with the tour office when they opened at 8am. I tried to go back sleep, but no luck. Next, the same tour guide came back to the hostel at 8 am, the Innkeeper waking up the Chinese girls again, wanting to take me for a similar tour in a minivan. In lieu of getting in the van, I chose to ask for my money back in the office, which they refused to do until I made a scene. The owner guy (Korean) got testy and rude, saying "you so stingey, why you travel? $15 is not a lot of money." I replied that they should really disclose the total cost for the day and not surprise tourists with another $20 charge they don't understand at 5 o'clock in the morning, and if $15 isn't a lot of money, it shouldn't cause hardship to return it to me. There was yelling to further get my point across, and at one moment I tried to use their phone to call the tourist police and they yanked the receiver out of my hand. I got my money back, but it was not pretty. I realise that my tired, bad attitude turned a weird situation into a very nasty, negative one, and makes me cranky Bill Murray and everyone I meet annoying insurance salesman Ned Ryerson from the movie Groundhog Day.

Elsewhere, up to 6 people can share a tuktuk for $15 for the whole day (all drivers speak some English), and bicycle rental is around $2 all day.

I moved to another hostel by noon ($4/night). It was on a dirt road with a hodge podge of restaurants and odd-shaped buildings. Only the tourist strip is properly paved. The hostel looked popular with travelers. I rented a bike for $1/day and headed the 6 miles north to Angkor Wat, the main temple (the gnome in the movie Amelie gets his picture taken in front of it)!

I arrived at a ticket checkpoint that did not sell tickets. A little mad and disappointed, I listen as the woman guard tells me to go 2 miles back down the road I had just taken, over, and up a parallel road, where I would find the one and only ticket booth for the whole temple complex. I went there, and a 1 day ticket is indeed $20. I'm an asshole and the Lonely Planet needs to update the Angkor Wat section about the ticketbooth! A 2-day and 3-day ticket is the same, $40. The gal there was friendly and suggested I come back at 4:45pm to buy a $20 one-day ticket I can use at sunset that day, and all the next day. I went back to the hostel to kill 2 hours and noticed the room had filled with mosquitos. I checked out, having never sleped or opened by bag there, when they had no other rooms, and no mosquito nets. I moved to a 3rd hostel that happened to have a swimming pool ($5/night) with my backpack and the bicycle, and headed back the 6 miles to the temple just in time for sunset! I met a Khmer girl while visiting the site who immigrated to Switzerland as a child owing to the war. We had a nice conversation in French, and she told me that Khmer people don't pay to visit the temple, only tourists do. They just look at your face/skin tone and talk to you to decide if they'll make you buy a ticket or not.

I visited the temples all day and to my heart's content, skipping several. I've had it with beggars who touch and grab you in the street, or come up to the table in open air restaurants. Tomorrow is rest and immodium day, possibly including a dry-skin-eating-sucker-fish-foot-massage and fizzy drink combo ($1). Next I'll head to Battambang briefly and on to Thailand. Siem Reap would be a whole nother story if I were here with a group or boyfriend, or well rested and fully patient. I thought it would be the highlight of Cambodia, but it wasn't (the phosphorescent algae were it!), however, the temples outshone the town's crappy logistics.

At the same checkpoint this morning, I explained to a ticketless, sweaty couple on rented bikes where to find the ticketbooth.