If it is at all possible, consider visiting in Summer. Particularly if you live in a hot climate anyway. With a little bit of planning you can avoid heatstroke (basically, don't walk around in the middle of the day) and the tourist numbers are WAY down. This means less people in hotels / restaurants, summer discounts on accommodation and less people in the temples, helping prevent damage by over crowding and making your visit better!
Favourite Temples
Bang Mealea
100% our favourite temple was Bang Mealea. While some work has been done to prevent too much destruction, mostly this Temple is steadily getting reclaimed by the jungle. Makes for a very scenic and different temple, as well as a testament to the jungle prevailing!
Bang Mealea is quite far away from the other temples and isn't included in your Ankor pass. I believe it was an extra $5 and about 1.5 - 2 hours by tuk tuk. We left Ankor after sunrise and headed out to Bang Mealea, this meant we got there very early and were able to look around with NO ONE ELSE. Seriously, no other tourists were anywhere in this complex. As we left (at about 9.30 or 10am) the buses were arriving and people started pouring in. But still significantly less people than the main Ankor temples.
Sunrise at Ankor Wat
I have seen amazing images of sunrises at Ankor..... but this only holds true if the sunrise is indeed amazing. This varies with the seasons and weather - Our hotel did tell us that the sunrise was unlikely to be spectacular, we went anyway because we felt like we had to do it. I would recommend waiting for a day that is forecast to be good.... Or going out each morning at that time - but taking advantage
of everyone watching the sun to check out the temples. They get busy quickly, but in the time it takes the sun to rise you could see quite a bit of the most popular ones, with just about enough light to see by.
If you do want to take photos I would suggest getting there extra early, and getting very close to the water. When the early birds stood back from the waters edge to allow photos of the whole lake.... late comers simply stood in front of them to take their own photos.
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| Some of the crowd who turned out to watch the sunset. |
Hotels
There are a million hotels in Siem Reap - so as far as I can see they are very determined to make you happy and get good reviews! We stayed in one of the cheapest that we could find..... but that looked reasonably nice on the website.
I stayed at the golden temple villa
www.goldentemplevilla.com . The hotel was set amongst nice gardens and down a fairly quiet street. It wasn't far from the centre of town (very easy walk) but was far enough to be out of the hustle and bustle a little bit.
The restaurant was nice, open plan and almost amongst the gardens and was a place to relax as well as just for meals. They had newspapers and magazines with padded bench seats along the side that were nice to relax on. They also had free tea/coffee/bananas down there all day.
The breakfast included had a number of options - plenty of food and was nice enough. They would even pack you a take away breakfast for early morning trips to the temples. That was good..... but consider carefully what you order for packability!
Their special also includes a free massage, and it was very nice and relaxing to be able to go take a massage before bed one night after walking around temples all day!
There were some issues with power going out at night (meaning no aircon) but this tended to come back on in about 15 minutes. Not sure if they had a generator to cover themselves or it was just luck, but I think power outages are fairly common - especially in summer with everyone using air conditioners!
When we left they also gave us a gift (a scarf) and took our photo with the reception staff. which they then emailed to us. It was an entertaining touch!
I have friends who stayed at petite villa. They said it was pretty much what they expected from the photos / description, though they did have some issues checking in, I think the hotel was full (even thought they had booked) and they had to go around the corner to another hotel. Restaurant was hit and miss and they decided that we probably got a better deal - because ours was a lot cheaper!
Restaurants
Haven
This is a training restaurant who source their trainees from the youth leaving orphanages with no skills or family to support them as well as youth from rural areas with very little opportunities for education or training.
Haven website PLEASE BOOK AHEAD we were very luckily able to get a table for two without booking. But only because it was the off season AND we went for dinner very early. I am so glad we did manage it. The food was amazing, reasonably prices (many of the training restaurants take advantage of the "social good" status to up the price... a lot). Staff were very friendly and polite, even when explaining that if we wanted a table we had to be out before the next booking - easily managed as the food came out really fast!
Other than the temples:
Day in the life tour with Beyond unique escapes
http://www.beyonduniqueescapes.com/cambodia/small-group-tours/village-tours/day-in-a-life-tour.html
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"Sewing" sheets of palm leaves
for housing materials |
We did a day in the life tour. This went to a small village just out of Siem Reap in which many of the families are living day to day and often don't have enough food. The tours go to a different family each day and help out - we made palm frond walls that they they can use for their walls and roof on the house. At other times you might be planting or picking rice or similar activities that these families do almost everyday. By going to a different house hold each day they are able to minimise impact on any one house, and allow each family to have the opportunity to supplement their income with some tourist money for looking after us.
They have trained some families in hygienic food preparation and so we got to have a traditional mean prepared by the local family while we watched and asked questions / joined in. The guides were really friendly and talkative, happy to discuss many aspects of Cambodian life.
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| Some of the family we spent the day with |
It was a great way to have a day off from temples and see a much more traditional part of Cambodian life. When you buy the temple tickets they are valid any three days in a week period - so having a day off to do something different if a good way to spread them out!
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We started with a buffalo cart ride through the village
to see the area. Each buffalo cart driver receives about $3 for
use of their carts - with a poverty line of $1 a day this is a massive
chance for them to save some money that wouldn't normally
be in the village at all. |
I wish we had more time and were able to do a cooking class or something here - I have no doubt that all their tours would be as good!
Shadow puppet theatre
I can't for the life of me remember the name of the place we saw the puppet show. It was a hotel / restaurant where you got a buffet dinner and the show for about $15-20. The buffet wasn't too bad, average buffet style food.... the show was interesting, they had people on stage doing the voices of the puppet and and while they did give an English explanation of what was happening before each scene - it wasn't understandable at all. The show was kind of entertaining, in the what the heck are we watching kind of way.... especially once we started making up stories to go along with whatever was happening. They then did a number of short dances similar to the ones we saw in Phnom Penh at the museum - but not nearly as good.
Entertaining enough if you are willing to go with the flow and have a laugh..... but definitely not an amazing high class act.
Phare - the Cambodian Circus
Check out the Battambang post for more info on this circus. Their school is located at Battambang and they have shows running there with students (which were awesome!). The Siem Reap show though, it is a whole new level of amazing! This is an international level circus act, and I can guarantee you won't be seeing a circus this good anywhere else for $15! The ticket and merchandise costs go towards their school and social programs to help more kids get out of bad situations in back into school and learning skills.
As well as having a smaller selection of art works from the Battambang art school they had various items such as shirts, hats or bags that would make great gifts. There is also a bar and cafe with a number of small dishes perfect for a pre-show snack!
We were blown away by the show... I wish we had gone on our first night in town not our last night...... I would have gone again! They actually have a couple of different shows which regularly change, so if your lucky you might even stay over the transition and get to see a couple of shows!
I actually didn't take any photos here.... I was too engrossed in enjoying the show! But here are a couple from the other show in Battambang!
