Siem Reap

I wrote extensively about the p4p in Siem Reap the last trip, so I won’t go into too much detail here. I will say, however, that my second trip to Siem Reap confirms that this place is a good to decent hobby destination—a very safe place with lots and lots of girls and a variety of hobbying activities. Very few punters around here as many are focused on the more publicized hobbying in PP; or, most guys are here with tourists in groups or with their families. Many times I was the only foreigner at some of these massages or the only punter period. Lots and lots of pretty girls. Also, you don’t hear about any arrests or police crackdowns as you do for PP. The only drawback is, as I mentioned before, Siem Reap is much more expensive than other parts of Cambodia. But I would still consider Siem Reap a viable sidetrip for a BKK and Pattaya trip, especially if you want to visit Angkor Wat and are into VN girls like I am now.

I went back to visit some of my favorite temples of Angkor Wat with my girlfriend du jour and spent a good bit of time at the Martini Bar hanging with a lovely from my previous trip. I also visited Zanzibar hotel and hooked up with some very fine freelancers on a short time basis as well.

For those of you who read my last trip report, I again spent my two nights in Siem Reap with an incredible 18 y.o. VN girl named Kung; suffice it to say that I was latched on to this babe, all parts of her, for each night that I was there. An absolutely phenomenal body coupled with an immensely cute face; just couldn’t get enough of this girl.

PRE-PP TRIP PLANNING

HOTEL: I tried to get in touch with the California Café/Guest House after reading some good recs of the place. But the owner didn’t email in time as he was on a long overland trip. Appears they need to hire some staff. The owner did email and he was very knowledgeable about the place and gave me some great intel on PP. He recommended I "avoid Svay Pak like the plague" -- more on this later.

My driver, Wee Ben (benweekh@yahoo.com) ended up reserving a place that he recommended called the Hawaii Hotel. Details later w/ a photo. Great location near the Central market and $20.00 for a room. Mr. Ben assured me it was very guest friendly.

The other hotels I had on the short list, based on recs from other sites, was Paris Hotel, Holiday and Walkabout hotel. Be careful with the Holiday hotel, which is supposed to be a nicer hotel. When I asked the reservation guy about guest policy, there was silence on the line, and then his response to me was “how many guests you want to bring”. Wrong Answer. No hotel is gonna limit me from brining up my VN harem, no one.

DRIVER: I had several posters here and in the other sites recommend Mr. Wee Ben. Very responsive to my email and this guy was very patient with me in answering all my questions about PP. Speaks and writes good English. Ben charges $20.00 per day, plus extra and gas money for excursions outside of PP.

ROADTRIP TO PP.

I thought it would be interesting to take a drive down to PP to see some of the countryside. In addition to stocking up on some supplies and checking out our car, I hit the books and motivated myself to learn some Khmer because we were going to travel through the heart of inner Cambodia. I was especially focused on learning the “honorific” way to say things in case we ran into guys with guns.

The roads are decent near Siem Reap, Kampong Chang and near PP, but the roads get progressively worse as you go out in between these big cities. Lots of obstacles on the roads, like pot holes, bicycles, pedestrians, farm animals, carts, roadkill, etc. Did you ever play the game “frogger” when you were a kid, then you can visualize all the crap that’s on the roads here. We avoided night driving as I heard that some Khmers don’t believe in using their headlights and there are very few, if any, street lights outside the cities. The biggest danger is by far the fricken crazy drivers, especially the large trucks full of people and cargo, as well as big buses that are constantly trying to pass each other on both sides of the highway. Khmers are impatient drivers (worse than Costa Ricans who have tailgating down to an art). These drivers don’t play chicken here, their game here is Russian Roulette with a single chamber gun – i.e. their truck.

There are periodic checkpoints along the main highway, which at first alarmed me a bit since these scruffy looking guys stand in the middle of a street with a makeshift roadblock. Since they had no uniforms or other badges of authority (My paranoid mind automatically thought “Khmer Rouge”). Turns out that these guys are harmless, Cambodia doesn’t have any tollbooths yet so these guys are the “Tollbooth”. I learned something interesting, uniforms are banned here unless you’re part of the army and stationed on a military base or the police; in fact, army guys that go off base have to change into their civilian clothes, obviously because people get spooked by guys in uniform due to their horrendous civil war past.

The other funny thing was when I was dozing off, and half asleep, my driver commented, nonchalantly, that “those [unintelligible] have guns…” Upon hearing the word “guns” I quickly awakened and asked what, where? The driver points to the trees and says, “trees have gum” – “gum trees”. Spare me the National Geographic nature stuff, I told him.

Originally, my driver and I allocated about 5-6 hours to get to PP. We departed at 9am and actually ended up arriving in PP about 5:30. The trip itself was truly an experience, and not for the faint of heart. Most of the delays were traffic near the big cities, and unexplained backlog for no apparent reason. I did see one accidents on the highway with a moped.

Would I recommend this road trip? Probably not. The dangers I noted with erratic drivers and the road conditions probably isn’t worth it. Take a flight from Siem Reap or, I read on other boards, there is a speedboat from Siem Reap to PP which might be more fun and safer (or maybe not).