Mar. 8 – Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, The smile of Ankgor

Our flight from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap is a quick 45 minutes. At the airport we meet up with our tour guide and driver. After checking in at our hotel, we waste no time, heading out with our guide to the Bayon Temple, which has over 200 smiling faces of Angkor.

I love that the ancient temples here have these long, romantic corridors with wide-open entrances that look like picture frame doorways. The doorways are perfectly aligned so that you can see right down the halls. At the Bayon temple, my favourite sight is looking down a dark hall and seeing this huge, bright smile at the other end of it lit by natural sunlight. Just beautiful…magnificent…I am so excited to be here.

I also find it amusing that I have to prove to every ticket office at these cultural places that I speak Khmer, so I don’t have to pay to get in places. I’ve even had ticket officers chase after me, because they swore I was from China or Japan. Funny though that I am the only one targeted in our group; ma and our guide pass no problem. I am well-remembered by everyone as the one who speaks “bai-lam, bai-lam”, translated as “so-so”. I’ll accept that, especially if it saves me from paying $20 to visit a major site. That buys lunch and dinner!

Tonight, dinner is at my step-aunt’s place in Siem Reap. Above is a pic of her and her sons standing in front of her laundry business; they live above it. Unlike Phnom Penh, Siem Reap is a walkable city. After a delicious home-cooked meal, my aunt satisfying my new vegetarian and seafood diet (note: I gave up meet here; will explain back home), ma and I do the penguin walk with full bellies back to our hotel.