Luang Prabang to Angkor – Day 8: Siem Reap

November 02, 2024

Today was our last day in Laos. We ate a slow breakfast and asked the front desk to arrange a van to the airport, which was ready in about half an hour. Joining us was a group of Canadian tourists who seemed completely nonplussed about getting to the airport just minutes before their flight to Saigon. We, on the other hand, arrived over an hour early, which gave us plenty of time to check in and fill out the e-entry form to Cambodia: We were only informed of this obligation by the lady at the check-in counter, but at least she saved us time at the airport in Siam Reap.

We arrived at the airport in Siam Reap well before noon. However, our timeliness did not come in very handy, as we needed to wait for a bus to take us to the centre of the city, which lies about an hour away. Taking a taxi would have cost us over twice as much, so we sat down at an airport restaurant and ate a small lunch. That is, I ate a small lunch, as I had given Barron the hamburger I was served on the aeroplane. We compensated for this neglect many times over in the evening, when we visited a restaurant with a ten-course tasting menu for forty dollars. Neither of us knew this beforehand, but I felt too awkward to leave once I found out, and Barron wanted to give it a try.

We did not have all that much time to kill. Having arrived past two o’clock, we walked from the bus station to Wat Bo and from there to Wat Damnak. The latter temple is an interesting one: beside its worn stupas, it also has a small cemetery with large and ornate family crypts. After checking in at our hotel, I called us a Grab to the Angkor National Museum. Unlike Grab in Bangkok, the local version of the application in Siem Reap includes tuk-tuks, which are generally much cheaper to rent than cars. However, tuk-tuk drivers often do not carry around much change, so we had to ask our driver to wait outside the museum while we bought tickets to break our 20,000 bill.

The museum is well organised even if formidably expensive. Distributed across two floors, its halls are separated thematically and geographically. An entire room on the second floor dedicated to Buddha images, which allows for an instructive explanation of the mudras. On the first floor (which, paradoxically, one visits only after touring the second), one room houses objects from Angkor Wat, while another contains artefacts from Angkor Thom. These are further sorted by category and age, with all the tympani, for example, grouped together. A representative sample of statues of gods from the Hindu pantheon can be found on the first floor.

We waited a little before leaving the museum, as it had begun to rain while we were inside. We had agreed that we would leave no later than five o’clock no matter whether the weather improved or not, but the rain stopped at five on the dot. Just south of the museum lie the Royal Independence Gardens, which are marked on Google Maps as having a colony of fruit bats. We found out that this information is entirely accurate: the bat colony thrives despite its central location in the city, generating strange noises and the familiar sweet smell of warm bat faeces. On the southern end of the gardens, we visited the Royal Residence, where a percussive ensemble had just finished playing an energetic tune. We finally made our way home with one last stop at Wat Preah Prom Rath.