I always wanted to see Cambodia, especially Ankor Wat.
But my original mission objective would now be made exponentially more difficult simply because my most potent magic spell — sweet talk --- would be made null and void in Cambo. I neither speak nor read a single word of Khmer or Vietnamese. Moreover, I had no support group or resources to draw upon in my mission. Thus, I had no choice but to look up an old ex-pat friend now living in Pattaya who made many trips to Cambodia. I’ll call him the “Wizard of LOS” for his legendary exploits into the mysterious land of the Khmers. So, I’m off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Los….Sorry, I digress.
Anyway, in between beers and a vist to our favorite BJ Bar, the Wizard imparts his knowledge of the Khmer and Viet girls that populate the magical kingdom of Cambodia in the most succinct way. “Why the fuck do you want to do that?”, he asks me when I ask about photographing strategies. “The girls are fricken scared shitless of cameras there, too many Bible thumpers and wacked liberal world movement people publicizing the plight of the working girls”, he says to me somberly. “Just enjoy yourself, and don’t stress about that shit! he admonishes. “And don’t forget to wrap your goddamn magical wand in Cambo ‘cause the place is infested with HIV”. Well, "fuck you too", I recall saying to the Wizard of LOS. Oh well, so much for the Wizard’s word’s of wisdom.
Next, I scour the boards for pics of Cambo girls, but nothing terribly interesting and informative. So here I am, in the midst of an important mission with no intel and with absolutely no idea what to expect….
Tickets, Lodging and Preparation
So, as soon as I got to BKK, I started visiting travel agents and scouring the websites. Most agencies booked at higher end hotels where I knew from experience, that they might frown on hobby activity or charge a premium. After visiting several of these places, I discovered that the best source was right under my nose—the Dynasty Inn Travel Agency. I’ve used them before to reserve hotels and sidetrips and always had a great experience with these guys. Excellent operation. As with this and other trips, I made a few changes to the itinerary which required nothing more than a phone call to the friendly travel agent who would make all the changes for me, including the change to the airport pickup.
Their airfare was also the cheapest to Siem Reap, about 10,600 baht (others were consistently asking 11,700-12,500 baht). Siem Reap is more expensive than other Cambodian cities because there are only 2 airlines going there from BKK nonstop, Bangkok Air and a Cambodian Airline. The Dynasty also recommended a good hotel, the Freedom hotel, which is run by someone they know. The clincher for me was that the travel agent told me that they did not charge a “guest fee” nor did they discourage hobbying (hotel description later). They charged me $35.00 per night, which included a deluxe room, airport pickup and dropoff, and breakfast every morning. Here are some great ocntact numbers for these guys.
Thailand Tourist Service (Dynasty Inn) ttstrav@ksc.th.com Tel. 6767507
Freedom Hotel: freedom@online.com.kh Tel. (855) 63 97 34 73
Important Photos & Visa Application
Remember that you will need a few passport sized photos to obtain the VISA and to obtain a photo ID pass to see all the ruins. The best place I found was at the Zoom Photo center right in the heart of NANA, next to the convenience store, and across from NANA Hotel, on Soi 4. They took 4 photos of me for 200 baht and did it in less than 10 minutes!
Oh, the Cambodian VISA applications are available at the Bangkok Airways terminal in BKK. Fill it out on the plane or in the waiting area.
Pre-Airport Tasks.
I checked out of the Dynasty Inn and stored my big luggage there and locked up my valuables in their safe. The dynasty will store the luggage for free so long as you prepay for your room, but the safe deposit box was 50 baht for a day. 50 baht a day was worth the peace of mind – I left all unnecessary airline tickets, extra cash and non-essential credit cards. Leaving the luggage was a good idea because I didn’t want to lug around all that dirty laundry in Cambo.
Flight to Siem Reap
Damn idiot taxi driver took me to Bangkok Airways domestic terminal instead of the international terminal, despite my repeated inquiries as to why he was doing that. Well, made it to the right airport in time and checked in. I soon got a rush of adrenaline thinking, wow, I’m about to fly into a new land, a new adventure. This is why I’m living life, for adventure, this is exactly what I need to forget about the rat race back home.
The immigration guy looked at my ticket and said “Holiday in Cambodia?”, which was a bit odd because I thought a lot of people refer to Cambodia as “Kampuchea” now. Not as catchy, this new word. But this got me immediately reminiscing about that great Song “Holiday in Cambodia”, forgot who sang it, but it’s a catchy song. But I hummed the words as I approached the boarding area, fully expecting to see grizzly, old Indiana Jones types or Crocodile Dundee types to board the plane with me. But wait! As I sat there, the boarding area slowly filled with European Tour groups in Aloha shirts, cameras and goofy hates and all. And, then, out of nowhere, a group of about 20 kids saunter up like they’re all dressed to go to a picnic. Lastly, a group of about six females, the lonely planet Bohemian backpackers, come sit near me. Holy Cow, what is this! Maybe I’m in the wrong waiting area, this ain’t no adventure and danger, this is a friggin amusement park tour I thought to myself as I unconsciously took my Indiana Jones hat off to put into my backpack.
We finally board the ATR 72 (turbo prop plane), and I get seated next to one of the female Bohemian backpackers with, no shit, a copy of the Lonely Planet guide as her reading material. She turns out to be Finnish, never met one before, but striking Nordic features. Nice conversation with the Bohemian gal, cute face, but after serially chomping on spinners for a week, the Finnish gal seemed a bit too talkative, and way to assertive in her ways (hogging up the elbow rest). She was also too big-boned for me. Her friends shared similar physiques, and the thought did cross my mind that there may have been some Lesbo tendencies with these gals, perhaps I stumbled onto a “man-hater” convention. Anyway, the flight is uneventful, about an hour long. I exchange pleasantries with the Finn-Bohemian and tell her to swing by with her friends if she’s around my neck of the woods, her friends give me that look, like “yea right.” Whatever! I thought to myself,, I’m here to bang me some Cambo chicks.
Siem Reap Airport & Customs
I was pleasantly surprised at how modern and clean the airport was. It certainly didn’t look third world. As soon as you enter the airport building, look for the VISA application counter off to the left. Give them a photo and the filled out application. It took about 10 minutes of very efficient assembly-line service to get the VISA. No demands from bribes here or immunization docs here, although I did have my official looking Pattaya Memorial Hospital blood test results. After the Visa, since I had no check in bags, I cleared customs and immigration within 10 minutes.
The Driver from the Freedom was waiting for me, and loaded my bags into the car, which was a nice Camry. My first impressions of Cambodia was, again, how clean and tropical it looked. I was fully expecting some run down shithole like TJ or Manila. The roads were nice, the buildings appeared to have been built with some urban planning in mind, and there was the look and feel as if I were actually in Hawaii! The roads were empty around 9pm. The center of town had some very elegant, French style hotels. Lots of tourist hotels and nice restuarants lined the road from the airport to the hotel.
Arrival at the Freedom Hotel
The Freedom actually turned out to be a far better hotel than I expected. It’s about 15 minutes to the ruins, and about 5 minutes from the heart of Siem Reap. The facilities are extremely clean and well maintained. Most of the guests were actually tourists from Asia and Europe, but I did notice a few single travelers such as myself.
I was soon to discover that the Freedom was not only girl friendly hotel, the mostly male staff (younger guys) actually gave me a thumbs up when I took a girl up. In fact, I got to know 2 guys very well and they even accompanied me to Martini’s Disco a few nights. They don’t check girls’ IDs here so I wouldn’t leave around valuables in the room.
There are no safes in the room, they do it the old fashioned way --- they wrap up your valuables in newspaper, tape it up, and you sign across the tape with an ink pen. Kind of primitive considering that all my valuables, my passport and airline ticket would be stored this way for a few days. They then place the package in a large communal safe. Surprisingly, this appeared to be a fairly reliable method of storing valuables.
The rooms itself was very large and furnished with a huge bed and some basic bedroom furniture. Here's a pic of a standard deluxe room for $35.00.
[PS: the girl does not come with the room, but I'll explain the girl later]
Only drawback is that there are no elevators, but it’s only 3 floors up. Also, there are occassional blackouts and the hot water runs low during the nights (same as Angeles City). But nothing truly major.
The Freedom also had an internet room downstairs with about five computers, they charge about $1 per 30 minutes, pretty good machines with the latest software. The restaurant on the first floor is pretty good as well, serving Khmer and American food.
What I realized later, which turned out to be a huge benefit, was that Freedom had, on staff, a group of drivers and guides who could be hired for $20/day. I got to meet a few of these drivers and they all spoke English. Excellent group of guys! They truly took care of my like no other. I felt they were honest for the most part, but I could tell that on one or two occasions, massage places actually charged me more to pay a kickback to the driver. This wasn’t a huge concern for me b/c my driver was way cool and went out of his way to help me out and to plan my itinerary. The Driver’s also knew exactly why I was there and knew where and when to take me to sample the hobby life in Siem Reap. The Driver was also very knowledgeable about the Ruins and steered me to only the ones worth seeing.
I think in Cambodia, more than anywhere else, you should seriously need a good driver or motodop driver as they are essential for you communicating with the locales and steering you to the points of interest worth seeing. Not many people spoke English, except for the tourist oriented areas.
Currency
There were no ATMS in Siem Reap, but there were money changing booths that take traveler’s checks, cash, Western Union, etc.
The de facto currency is the U.S. dollar, take plenty of ones and fives. They also took Thai Baht at a lot of places as well, but be careful because the vendors like to screw with the exchange rate. Any change less than a dollar is given to you in the Cambodian Riel. Riel is cumbersome because you need a whole wad of it to may for things since $1 equaled about 3800 Riel.
Many of the restaurants and hotels took credit cards, mostly VISA and Mastercard; fewer took AMEX.
Photo: Freedom 27
(Message edited by merlin on December 03, 2003)