Third day. Finally waking up naturally and not skipping sleep for some adventure. We made ourselves ready facing a new day and quickly headed to The missing socks laundry café, after the American Griffin had recommended us their breakfast. We were happy he had given us this advice, as their breakfast consisted of waffles filled with different kinds of delicacies, with prices ranging from 2.5 USD to 5 USD, if I remember correctly. I and Sara got a syrup waffl, whereas Lukas and Eric tried out the more expensive hamburger waffles. Everybody except me tried out their coffee/cappuccino, as they marketed themselves as having won a barista price last year. Apparently it was delicious, but not as delicious as saving money after having taken out too little cash for the trip.

Leaving the restaurant, we headed for the Old Market in Siem Reap to get a good view of the local life. The market was located inside a big factory-like building, and in here we could see lots of people selling and buying all sorts of groceries out in the open. It felt a little bit disgusting walking around in the market, as we could see people selling raw meat that was left out in the open in Siem Reap’s heat (highly unsanitary, as it only takes 3 hours out in the open, according to Lukas, before the meat starts turning bad). This feeling turned out to only be a precursor to what was about to come, however…

Exiting the market, we headed for the postal office, because Lukas had to send some letters to his family, I think. Whilst making our way there, we passed by a buddhist temple where they made strange annoying noises, but also provided a nice surrounding for us tourists to film and photograph.

Heading back home from the post office, Sara seemed to have found her natural habitat, and I found some new friends (and enemies)!

After this, we got back to the hostel, hung out by the pool and ordered some food from the hostel. Food from the hostel should not be ordered. I ordered a BLT sandwich in hopes of finally getting some bacon after having experienced Asia’s complete lack of it. Turns out bacon means fried ham. The others ordered sandwiches and a curry, and they were mostly disappointed as well. We had to wait for 45 minutes to get something so simple to eat, and it did not taste that good, in addition to it postponing our departure to the fishing village to which we were about to head. We had to leave in a hurry with food pushed down in home-made take-away packaging. Leaving me with no opportunity to complain about their bad food quality and service. It was also quite expensive, as it cost 4 USD. Therefore, take my advice and do not order food from the hostel.

Anyways, we headed to the fishing village by bus followed by a boat trip.

It took about an hour in total to get out to the fishing village, but it was definitely worth it. It was a very nice contrast to my western styled life seeing how simple people in this area lived, and experiencing the contrasting views on life first hand. People in these fishing villages lived here to avoid taxes, and 95% of the workforce consisted of fishers, while the rest were sellers. There was barely any land to step on; only an island with a buddhist temple in the first part of the fishing village. An island we stopped by for our first stop.

Again, the buddhist temples make lots of noices, apparently… But kids do not seem to mind! Apparently they become extremely good swimmers at a very young age here. The guide told us that they can save lives at the age of 2, and that they learn how to swim before they walk.

We hopped on the boat again and headed to a floating restaurant where Lukas tried out his drone, and Eric tried out their local coconut juice served from a fresh coconut.

The restaurant apparently kept crocodiles in cages; most likely for food later. Take a look at this trapped animal below:

Oops, wrong photo… The only thing Sara’s trapped in is time here. Captured by light propagating through the air into my phone’s lens in an instant’s notice. Creating nerdy comments in a blog post a couple of weeks later. Creating comments about the nerdiness of the comments in the blog post. Creating comments about comments commenting the comments about nerdiness of this blog. Creating comments about the said comments about comments commenting comments of the nerdiness of this blog. Hold on… Now I found the correct photo. Glad I could stall you!

Speaking of stalling, it turns out Eric could not really handle waiting for his coconut to get ready, even though it only cost 2 USD. I was a bit scared there for a moment… And no, no special effects are involved; my camera played a trick on me there for a moment.

After having finished our drinks, we headed out to see the sunset from the boat, followed by a boat ride during a very intense, but distant, thunderstorm. It was very cozy riding through it, and I will always remember the light show from the skies and water lighting our way up as our surroundings got darker. A feeling that only intensified when we entered our bus again and shut off all inner lights to see this rainy spectacle from a comfortable and dark seat.

Later on that evening, we got back to the hostel and took our free beer as provided by the hostel between 19.00-20.00. We played some games and met up with Texas Tessa who joined us for dinner and drinks at the street market and pub street.

Whilst at the supermarket, Lukas and Eric tried out bugs from one of the carts.

Me and Lukas also tried out their fried ice cream, which is basically melted ice cream with ingredients of your choice that is fried on a cold plate. It was delicious. We all also tried out noodles from a lady in another cart, and most of us tried the banana panacakes from another cart as well. For the ice cream, I think we paid 2.5 USD; for the noodles we paid 2 USD; for the banana pancakes 1 USD. The most price worthy deal was the noodles that were also delicious!

Lastly, me, Sara and Tessa went to a bar which served a free drink upon arrival. The bartender was really weird, but we managed to have a good time and learn more about Tessa’s travels and background. Turns out she had been living in Sydney the last year and backpacked through Indonesia and Vietnam for a couple of months. She was soon going to head to central America for backpacking there. I asked her to give travel advice for central america when she is there. Who knows, maybe I can extend my blog in the future with more travel advice?

The next day we woke up early to get waffles at the waffle place again. We were there at 6.50, and they opened at 7.00, but it turns out they were lazy with times. I guess you should not trust a restaurant that is also a laundry wash.

Anyways, this made us go to their neighbouring restaurant instead for pancakes. Lukas was a bit sad, because he got to wait for his pancakes when the rest of us ate ours. We finished with getting some take away coffee from the waffle place and then headed to the hostel to take a Tuk-Tuk to the airport.

Getting back home to the Changi airport, we finally understood how one should drink water. To think that we had done it wrong all these years…

Finally, here I am, reminiscing about this trip, and trying to provide you with a personal and fact rich view of what it is like visiting Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. I definitely recommend this trip, and it is very cheap for a weekend trip. The cost of this trip can be broken down as following:

• Flight: S$375. Can be made much cheaper if done earlier.
• Accomodation for 3 nights: 15 USD. You get a great hostel for very cheap.
• Food: 5 USD per meal on average. This makes a total of 40-50 USD.
• Massage: 2 USD for Fish Massage. 12 USD for Khmer massage. This makes a total of 14 USD. You get what you pay for, so do not take the cheapest Khmer massage; spend a little bit of money to get high quality massage.
• Angkor Wat: 37 + 25/4 (for Tuk-Tuk, as we were 4 persons) USD for one day. Trust me, you only need one day for a weekend trip here. It is too exhausting to go here for multiple days in a row.
• Fishing village: 18 USD. Definitely worth the money, as it is a whole afternoon worth of interesting adventure.
• Tuk-tuks from and to airport: 9 + 8 USD.

This leaves us with a total of S$375 + S$215 = S$590 for this trip. To buy souvenirs and go out, you should set aside another 10-30 USD, making it a total of S$600-620. As you can see, the plane tickets were very expensive, but that was due to the fact that we booked them 2 weeks before departure. The price for the flights can definitely be sliced down by at least S$100, and most likely by S$150-200 if done in time, and booked as a group. Our biggest mistake was that we booked our flight tickets individually; making the prices go up from Sara’s S$250 ticket to Lukas’ S$404 ticket. For future travellers, I therefore recommend that you book as a group, even though it might be tricky to transfer money to the one who pays.

This is the end of my Cambodia stories. Thank you for having read through it all! I am now exhausted from having written and edited so many hours the past day, and really hope you enjoy the content and find the tips helpful. Please comment below if you have any questions.

Next up is Hong Kong!

Oh, and I totally forgot… The disgusting thing in the Old Market was a 30 cm big rat (not counting the tail) stepping on my bare foot (as I was wearing sandals) whilst running to get cover underneath a table where they sold groceries. I would therefore never recommend buying any groceries off of this market…