I didn’t mention how hot it was in Singapore. And it was. But we found hotter. OMG Cambodia! 35C! We flew from Singapore to Siem Reap in Cambodia, which is the gateway city for the Angkor Wat temple complex. We arrived, visited the museum for an overview of the area history and then had lunch. After lunch we were dropped at our hotel. You guys! This place! It is incredible. It is called Phum Bairang, which means Green Village. We went off the main road and down several very dusty red dirt roads – passed along a white wall – a man opened a gate and waved us in. Almost the first thing we saw was the resident family of water buffaloes munching on the grass. Scattered across several acres were small villas. We were greeted and formalities completed and then we took a leisurely walk across a board walk through a rice paddy to our villa. It is so beautiful! When our guide came the next morning he said it reminded him of the village where he grew up- rice, small houses, water buffalo, etc. I don’t think his village has this, though …
Our tour of the temples starts in the morning. The tour we booked had several options for the first night. We thought a boat ride, but it is the dry season and there isn’t enough water in the river. So –
A nighttime tour of foodie places by Vespa. The face masks are for dust and fumes, by the way. Our resort is a ways out of town, so the first adventure was driving first then back roads and then the busy roads to get to the city. Just a weaving back and forth through the traffic. The boss man led the way, and Wilf and I hung on as our drivers kept up.
We visited a brew pub for beers, then walked the local market to see what people were buying for dinner. We then headed to the night market, which sprawled for miles along the side of the highway.
I think the tour group thought they were going to have a couple of rugby players on their hands ‘cause they had loaded up on beer and kept trying to get us to drink some. Actually they may have been rather taken aback when we appeared – probably old enough to be their grandparents. You should have seen them carefully getting us on and off the scooters, snapping our helmets on. They were very sweet to us.
This lady was selling a wide variety of deep fried bugs. Crickets. Ants. Grasshoppers. Water beetles. Couldn’t do it, sorry. At the next stop we did have grilled stuffed frog, chicken and quail. You know what I’m going to say – tastes like chicken.
The gal who was my driver was also the photographer. She has sent me a bunch of great photos of the evening but I’m having trouble downloading them on my phone. I’ll have to post them later.
Let’s just say that in addition to drinking beer, eating grilled critters and zooming all over town we also played games of chance, and tried exotic fruit. And then had dinner. It was hoot and a night we will long remember
Next up – temple overload.
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