Uncle Tom... I mean Angkor Thom

Well, it was certainly an interesting start to our Angkor Wat trip... We were picked up by our tour guide and driver at the airport and after dropping our bags at the hotel, he had a full day planned for us already. Without any input from us, of course. He had decided that we definitely needed to see the floating village, a boat trip which would "only" cost us $15 per person. Oh, I forgot to mention - everything is in US Dollars in Cambodia. It's very odd. They do have their own currency, the Riel, but it's basically only used in place of coins as it's 4000 Riels to the Dollar. Menus are in US Dollars and the ATMs all spit out $20 and $5o bills. It's very odd, but certainly makes it simpler to not need to figure out the exchange rate and to not feel you need to guess on the precise amount of money needed, as you can always use it when you get home.

But I digress. We decided to go ahead with the floating village tour, even though $15 is a LOT of money in Cambodia. And would be in the US too, probably, for a short boat ride. For some perspective, I went out to a very nice dinner, had a beer and dessert and then a foot massage and it didn't cost more than $15. But oh well. It wasn't as bad as we had thought, although it was clearly a tourist trap. It was very interesting to see how the people live on the river. The majority of the people in this area are Vietnamese. Vietnam had previously controlled Cambodia and when they withdrew many of "regular" (non-military) people stayed behind. We were a little incensed that we were told we needed to tip after the boat ride. Normally we would have been happy to do so, but this time it felt like we were getting gypped twice.

On the way back to the hotel, our guide told us we should see one of the traditional Khmer shows. Basically, the Cambodian equivalent of a luau, with a buffet of local foods and a dance show. He told us that the hotels charge $25 for such a show, but that he knew of a very nice one that was only $12 and that "they also feed the driver and the guide." So clearly no ulterior motives there... He had basically guilted us into it, so we went ahead and met up with him an hour later. He insisted on picking us up at the hotel and driving us to the show a block away. We felt incredibly ridiculous for doing this, but it was clearly so he and the driver could claim their free meals. The show was boring and the food even more so, but it was about what we expected, and hey, it was only $12. My main complaint about the show was not the dance, but the tempo. They had a number of different dances, but all were at the same mid-tempo speed. A little variety people! We left before the finale. Who knows, that may have been fantastic! But we felt it was better to be well rested for our first day at Angkor Wat. Yippee!

Our first temple on the itinerary was Angkor Thom (Angkor means city, Thom means big or main) and the Banyan temple within it. It took me a while to realize our guide wasn't saying Uncle Tom, hence this post's title. Banyan Temple was an incredible place, with something like 54 towers that are all still standing, but it's also the most overrun with Korean tour groups of old ladies who all have the same haircut. We were ready to after about 30 minutes of exploring. We spent the rest of the morning at some of the smaller, more ruined temples before heading back to the hotel for the hottest part of the day. Our guide told us he'd come back to pick us up in 4 hours to see Angkor Wat and sunset from a nearby hill. We thought 4 hours was a bit excessive, but agreed that if we started before 3pm we probably wouldn't make it to sunset. As it turned out, we were easily able to fill it with a swim, a lounge by the pool, lunch and a massage (2 for 1 during lunchtime!).

Agkor Wat is technically just one temple - to refer to the whole area you'd call it Angkor. It's the one everyone has seen pictures of and is probably the most impressive purely for the long entrance bridge and the moat that reflects the building in it. Most of the other temples have moats as well, but they no longer contain water. It's also much larger and with broader open areas than those in Angkor Thom, so although there are just as many people there it doesn't feel quite as packed. After a spin around the complex by our completely personality-less guide, telling us random, disconnected and repeated musings about the temple (his favorite phrase was "same story I told you before") we headed up a hill to watch the sunset. Our guide stayed by the car and we were certainly not devastated to leave him behind. Sunset was a bit anticlimactic as it basically set behind a cloud way before it reached the horizon, but the hill gave a great view of the surrounding area.

Back in Siem Reap Aileen and I headed out immediately for dinner at Blue Pumpkin. We sat on a long, room-length white couch covered in white sheets with a tray table sat between us. We decided to splurge on a glass of wine each, for $1.75 a glass. I believe the entire meal came to $20 including an appetizer, 2 glasses of wine, 1 Orangina, 2 entrees and 3 desserts. (Yes I know, three desserts for 2 people. Two of them were for me. At $2 each, how could I resist?)

Our young, flamboyantly gay waiter was the highlight of the evening. As we finished our dinner, he stopped by and said something we couldn't understand. We asked him to repeat, to which he pointed to the remains of our dinner and said, "Awesome?" We laughed and said yes, our meal was awesome (it was). "Totally awesome" he answered. That sent us into hysterics. After that he stopped at our "table" each time he passed with "Dynomite?" and "Groovy?" I was just saying that he needed to learn some newer phrases when he stopped by and asked "Bitchin'?" We totally lost it on that one to which he confidently announced "Off the hook!" You can't get a more entertaining dinner than that.

We rounded off the evening with a beer at the local Irish pub (Molly Malones - think open-air, island bungalow meets Irish pub) and then an hour long, $5 foot massage (great after hiking around temples all day). Then back to our lovely hotel for an early night before braving our tour guide again!