Siem Reap
Trip Start
Jun 28, 2011
1
15
81
Trip End
Dec 13, 2012
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Siem Reap
Right we landed in Siem Reap on Saturday afternoon, after the worlds worst landing ever....i was shitting myself. Rich can explain the landing.....The plane was a really shit version of an Aer Arann plan. Some Chinese aeronautics called a MA60 (Google a picture!). Taking off and getting close to siem reap was no problem. We started our approach into siem reap all fine. Then out our window or more specifically angie's window i saw the runway and realised we were flying 90o to it. The plane starts to bank left. We are maybe 3-5k feet at this stage. I thought that there was maybe another runway running at another angle so it would be a quick turn. No such luck. He did a full 180 while all the time dropping in altitude. all we can see (angie had a pretty good/bad view depending on ho you look at it) out the window was houses and the earth getting closer and closer. Eventually he levels out, just as we are about to land, literally about 10 seconds. Angie was practically screaming at me. I am not sure what I could have done to help other than watch like her. Anyway, i'll never be flying Laos Airlines again (I can see the relief on Mam's face) so we can file this one under 'life experiences'!!!!
We're staying at really nice place called Okay 1 Villa (thanks Annie) with roof top pool for an amazing €10 per night....however, the weather hasn't been great so we haven't been able to take advantage of the pool yet. We just headed into the city centre on the first night, went to the night market where i got a pedicure (it was badly needed) and just got some food and had an early night as we had early rise for Angkor on Sun morning.....see seperate blog on Angkor.
After our morning at Angkor, we can back to hotel and hit the hay for a few hours, then we headed back into town with Abi and Charlotte for some dinner...had gorgeous Mexican. We had heard about an orphange in Siem Reap called Acodo so we went there as they put on a show to raise awareness for the orphange. The place does outstanding work and has only been in operation since 2008, it really had a big impact on both myself and Richie so we donated but we also will try to come back sometime to voulunteer as Acodo is an non governmental organisation so they rely totally on donations and volunteers. We also will try to fundraise for them once we get home. There are 70 kids there at the moment and they also have a number of other Cambodian kids that come for help but they dont live at the orphange. They are currently fundraising to build a new school so that they can help lots more Cambodian kids. At the moment, the kids range in ages from 3 to 18 and they all have different stories and backgrounds which is obviously heart breaking but the work Acodo are doing is outstanding. We just took one photo of all the kids currently in the orphange.
That night we hit the night market with the girls and we got full body massages, they were soooo good but hilarious also as the Cambodian have different ways of massaging then the Thais. For your back they make you sit on chair and cross ur hands across your back then they preceed to roll you around and all you can hear are your back joints cracking....we weren't expecting that but it was great fun anyway. The boys, Rich, Bao and Darius (we met Darius on the slow boat and again while tubing in Vang Vieng) went and got cocktails...how gay!! so we just went on the batter that night in Siem Reap, there's no 11.30pm closing times here like Thailand and Laos so we got fairly pissed on $8 buckets of sex on the beach. We were recommonded a really good tuk tuk driver for Siem Reap called Mr Tep or Sak for short, he was excellent and so nice. So he picked us up for our drunken night out and we stopped for "fast food Laos style".....noddles at the side of the road.
Once the pounding headache dissolved the next morning, we headed off to the War museum....Rich can update here.....War Museum is a collection of old tanks,guns,mortors etc.from 30yrs of war in Cambodia. All of the old artillery was gathered around the siem reap region. Our guide was a man called Sanit. He likened himself to a cat because he reckons he has nine lives. At the moment he is on 8. He's been shot 3 times, lost one of his legs just below the knee, has been hit by shrapnal from landmines 3 times (which you can see in his knee and arm and also nealry blinded him) and had burns from a rocket launcher. We were pretty much stunned by what he was telling us and weren't prepared when he said that he also lost his wife and 4yr old child by a landmine. Sanit took us around and showed some of the big anti-aircraft guns etc. You'll see them in the photos but he was saying that they used them on people because there wasn't many aircrafts used during the war. He also showed some deactivated landmines and how they work. It's pretty fucked up what they were designed to do and that there are so many (hundreds of thousands) left in Cambodia and Laos. Every week people are dying from them. He also pointed out some dirty bombs. These are small uranium bombs and people didn't know that they had nuclear material in them so once they exploded they contaminated the area around them. Anyone who came into contact with the area ultimately died pretty horrible deaths. Hence why they we called dirty bombs. We also saw what looked like an old japanese plane which had some bullet holes in it. And there was a big cargo looking helicoptor there as well. We just chilled at the pool that afternoon and didn't get upto much as the War Museum was a lot to take in.
The next day, we all headed off minus Richie to a supermarket place we saw near the guesthouse. We first stumbled across a stationery shop and we were like kids in a sweet shop so we all stocked upon pens etc and Bao who is an artist was in his element and bought some arty stuff. Our next adventure was to the supermarket which stocked lots of American and Aussie brands so we spent about 2 hours walking up and down the ailes ooohing and aaahing at everything we recognised from home. I bought Salt and Vinegar Kettle crisps as I LOVE them and some baby wipes which are very handy while backpacking. Myself and the girls were craving a cheese fix so badly so we headed straight for the fridge section and low and behold we found loads of cheese however being backpackers we were on a budget and the cheese was expensive so we just got some mozzeralla and garlic and herb cheese and a fresh baguette. We headed back to the guesthouse and had our cheese fix alongside the pool.....it was heaven as us girlies all love cheese...Charlotte even got emotional at one stage...lol!!!
To sum up Siem Reap we had an unbelievable 4 nights just enjoying Angkor, exploring Siem Reap, meeting the best tuk tuk driver, staying at the best accommodation so far, visting the amazing orphanage, eating cheese, getting treated to pedicure and full body massage and best of all getting to enjoy all these experiences with our great crew....Abi, Charlotte, An, Bao and Darius. Hopefully we'll bump into each other again on our travels as Siem Reap will always be a fantastic memeory becuase of the guys xxx
