Siem Reap

Just north of this Cambodian city is the ancient mega temple ruin complex of Angkor, including Angkor Wat. We did a lot of templing in the area, and those will be their own stories. But we spent some nice time with new friends in Siem Reap as well.

The town is nothing too special. It is extremely catered to tourists, with a hostel district near beer street (where we stayed), and a massive amount of hotels and resorts everywhere else. There’s a few other day trips to do in the area, like Tonle Sap lake, hanging out with bomb diffusing rats, museums, and a circus. We did none.

Our hostel had a pool. And we spent most of our non-templing time hanging out at the pool with a group of friends we had made our first night.

Its nice connecting with new folks over non-travel related experiences. Travelling as a couple, we can have a tendency to retreat in our shells socially, and only spend time with each other. This happens a lot when we have a lot of planning balls in the air, or are just moving at a rapid pace. We can plan to do too many things in not enough time.

So having these evenings and extra days to just shoot the moon with some buddies about nonsense is nice. Going to dumpling restaurants and what not.

We did go to beer street with them. The people watching was very interesting. The vibe of the backpacker in Siem Reap falls into three categories. The first is us. Long term mid-late 20s backpacker seeing the world. Then there’s the 18 year old gap year party people, necking across the pool table at the same time were trying to take our shot. And finally the eat, pray, love hippies zooted out on some space dust impeccably keeping the beat to whatever trance music was on at the time. We were too sober to integrate with the latter two groups.

There’s lots do to in the city. If and when we go back, we may take our time with all other other activities. But sometimes vibes are all you need for a good day. See you at the temples!