City of Temples: Angkor Wat and Siem Reap, Cambodia

As a kid, I had a picture book about the ancient wonders of the world, filled with watercolors of famous sites like the pyramids, the Roman Colosseum, and the Greek Acropolis. The last pages, in a cursory nod to the Exotic East, featured something new: the awe-inspiring jungle kingdom of Angkor Wat. Though I went on to study classics, theology, and art history, my education on the world’s largest and most spectacular religious monument could easily have ended with these few pages in a children’s book. (Nothing like moving to Southeast Asia to make you look back in horror on the parameters of your Western education.) But luckily, it didn’t.

Angkor Wat is perhaps the most popular tourist attraction in Southeast Asia, which is not necessarily a point in its favor. However, compare seeing the temples of Angkor to seeing the Grand Canyon: it is one of the few iconic sites that doesn’t disappoint as a tourist. Yes, there will be crowds, including plenty of dreaded Bus Tour Groups With Flags. Your heart will be broken by little kids saying that they will go back to school if only you buy their postcards. It will be roastingly hot and dusty, oppressively humid, or a mud pit in a monsoon. But the temples really are extraordinary, the countryside is surprisingly beautiful, and really, Cambodia just has a way of getting under your skin.

Our mid-November trip was inevitably colored by current events: my parents flew into Singapore just days after the US presidential election. While I may have had modicum more of preparedness for the outcome than the average coastal liberal, given that I’d spoken to so many terrified expats about Brexit and the rise of the far right in Europe all fall, the results still left me extremely depressed. And now, a trip to Cambodia! It is difficult to think of a country with a more horrific recent political history. Having traveled through Poland, I know how intense this kind of tourism can be. Was it too late to fly to a beach for the week? Isn’t that what normal people enjoy out here?

After a few days of sight-seeing with our intrepid first visitors in Singapore, we flew to Siem Reap, the small city close to Angkor Wat, on a Wednesday afternoon. Siem Reap is a study in contrasts, with ox carts pulling past Michelin-starred restaurants. We settled into our apartment-style suite at Chateau d‘Angkor La Residence, a hotel in the French quarter. The layout was ideal for a group, and the suite had a kitchenette and washing machine perfect for après-temples. We wasted no time getting into the local fusion vibe, hailing a tuk-tuk to take us to a French bistro. (Real) Cheese? Wine (not from a box)? All for the price of a Singaporean hawker meal?! Andrew was so excited that he treated my parents to dinner. Hey, maybe Cambodia was une bonne idée.

The next morning we met our local guide, Savourn, who like every Cambodian we met, spoke perfect English and was unbelievably cheerful, even while fielding endless questions from the likes of the Rakowski family. We sprung for a guide with an air-conditioned car, which all of the travel guides make seem like a such a luxury, but which came out to about $15/per person per day, saved us a huge amount of time, and helped us avoid heatstroke. Andrew and I probably would have hired a cheap tuk-tuk if we were visiting Angkor Wat alone, but seriously, please ignore the advice that you should rent a bicycle. The area is vast, the roads are crap, and it will be a humid 100 degrees by 8 am.

Our itinerary for two-days of temples was as follows:

Day 1: Small Circuit
Angkor Thom: South Gate, Bayon, Baphuon, Terrace of the Elephants
Ta Prohm
Angkor Wat

Day 2: Grand Circuit + Banteay Srei
Pre Rup
Eastern Mabon
Neak Pean
Ta Som
Preah Khan
Banteay Srei

The temples were all incredibly different in person, ranging from massive complexes to tucked-away shrines, but my favorites were Bayon, Ta Prohm, Angkor Wat, and Neak Pean (not so much the temple, which is flooded and mostly underwater, but the setting). Andrew’s favorite was Baphuon for the view.

We’d stagger back to our hotel in the late afternoon and head straight for the pool, then tuk-tuk into downtown for one amazing dinner after another. $4 hour-long foot massages, homemade pastas, a lively bar scene with 50 cent beers, great elephant pants shopping… there’s a reason that people fly to Siem Reap and never see the temples. It’s a really cool and also extremely inexpensive town, two things that don’t always go together around here. A highlight was our dinner at Wat Damnak, a French-Cambodian fusion restaurant that made amazing use of local ingredients in everything from the cocktails to the desserts.

Thoroughly templed-out, we spent Friday morning in Siem Reap at the satisfyingly chaotic Old Market and craft markets before saying goodbye to my parents, who flew back to NYC by way of Singapore and Japan. Carol and Tom get a gold star for this trip, we really had a blast traveling with them. As you may have heard, they earned their stripes as travelers on an Africa safari in 2015. Seriously, it is not a casual trip out to this side of the world, only to spend most of it trekking through the oven-like outdoors over crumbling ruins. I hope I can keep doing this sort of travel for another 30+ years!

Later that afternoon, Andrew and I left Siem Reap for the village of Chrey thom, about 10 kms outside of the city, for Angkor Rural Boutique Resort and a change of scenery. Along with Daisy Resort in Phu Quoc, Vietnam, this gem has become a standard by which we measure every place we stay. It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean, eco-friendly, and staffed by locals who bent over backwards to be helpful and welcoming. We also ate some of our best meals in Southeast Asia in their kitchen, which had a simple menu based on the expansive garden across the street from the hotel. Cambodian food is SO good, lots of curry and seafood but with less heat than Thai. The resort is also run by a Cambodian woman, Sokun, who employs local villagers in Chrey thom and trains them in hospitality and crafts, which she also sells onsite. And if you weren’t already sold: there were kittens.

The hotel also had bikes, which we hopped on right away to explore the village and surrounding rice paddies, barely making it back before an epic thunderstorm set in. Here we were, two white tourists in shorts biking through someone else’s fragile livelihood, in the poorest community I’ve ever seen, which by the way also survived an unimaginable genocide barely thirty years ago, and people came out of every single house we passed to warmly greet us. It’s impossible not to be moved.

That night we went to Phare, the fun-for-all-ages Cambodian circus that seems to be a big source of pride in the area. It’s all acrobatics, dance, and music without animals, so it’s bit like a mini Cirque du Soleil. Phare has a social mission and the circus performers are all graduates of their nonprofit school for the arts, which creates opportunity for local students and artists. The acrobatics were jaw-dropping, and the local musicians were a blast. I highly recommend going, especially if you can get there early enough not sit behind a tent pole like we did.

Embracing Southeast Asia’s unofficial motto of “same same but different,” we decided to mix it up on Saturday by visiting Happy Ranch Horse Farm and taking a long horseback ride through the ride paddies, villages, and to a remote Angkor temple. I love riding, it’s such a great way to see a landscape that isn’t easy to traverse on foot and I am very comfortable on a horse. (I think it’s my Texas Ranger blood.) It also brings me great joy to be better at than Andrew at anything remotely athletic or outdoorsy, and horseback riding is one of the few things in this category. Andrew’s first time on a horse was on our honeymoon in Hawaii, and this might be his last. The tour itself was great– if hot once the sun was up– but Andrew started sneezing about halfway in, and was covered in hives by the time we made it back to the barn. There may have been some schadenfreude on my part, since I am allergic to dogs and am mercilessly teased for it. (To tempt you to subscribe to my blog: Andrew’s horse-induced allergy attack Part II will be chronicled in a forthcoming Myanmar post.)

After some recovery time at the pool that afternoon and feasting on a final meal at Angkor Rural Boutique Resort (where the staff treated us to a special candlelit farewell dinner), we made a last trip into Siem Reap for a tasting at the brewery, a French crepe, and a stroll along the frenetic Pub Street. Have I mentioned that I love it here?

Before heading to the airport Sunday morning, Sokun the hotel manager presented us with gifts made by local villagers: two bracelets woven with cotton thread and soda tabs.

Rather than being dispirited by Cambodia as I originally feared, I fell in love with this lush country and the generous, optimistic locals that introduced themselves everywhere that we went. Really: can you imagine biking through farmland in rural America and having an entire family step out of their house to just to say hello? (And not with the business end of a rifle?) If the Cambodian people can look to the future, I can, too.

So perhaps it won’t be a surprise, if you’ve made it to the end of this post, that I’ll be returning to Cambodia soon. I’ll be spending several weeks in June exploring more of the country and its history, seeing art, joining a yoga and mediation retreat, and making good on some volunteer work. Most people would still probably prefer a beach trip, but I can’t wait to go back.