Cambodia

Angkor What? Angkor Who?

November 10th, 2023 – November 13th, 2023

Table of Contents

1. There’s Nothing like a Spontaneous Trip
2. National Dishes run Amok on this Blog
3. Pub Street Chaos
4. Inspiring Stories
5. Sunrise at Ankgor
6. One Last Country

Cambodia was the 6th country we visited in our Southeast Asia 2023 Trip. If you want to read through chronologically, start here.

Nothing like a Spontaneous Trip

Cambodia was always on our list for this trip. What wasn’t planned was for our friends in Thailand, Mark and Pang, to also come. This happened, as all good plans do, over alcohol. We were at AV Izakaya in Bangkok, a bar with an adult video theme, as I drank a beer with a penis ice cube when an idea popped into my head. Let’s all go to Cambodia. Tickets were literally booked within minutes and it was official. We were all going to Siem Reap.

We landed at the newly built Siem Reap Angkor International Airport which was actually really beautiful and modern. When I say newly built, I mean this thing had opened just a month earlier meaning we were one of the first people to go arrive at it. Customs was a little weird, we had to give our passports to people, who offered to ‘expedite’ the process for a small fee. We said no and watched as our passports went down an assembly line of people who stapled a new page into the passport, stamped it, and passed to a guy to sign it. I think the people that paid maybe got theirs like 30 seconds faster.

A 30 minute drive in an uncomfortable Grab (our driver told us sad stories about himself the entire drive) and we were in town. We’d be spending the next couple of days at the Sarai Resort & Spa. It was beautiful, and it seemed like we were the only people there. Seriously, I think we saw 2 other guests the entire time.

National Dishes run Amok on this Blog

After freshening up at the hotel, we set off to find some grub. The sun had started going down at this point, so navigating through the streets of Siem Reap was quite the adventure. It felt like Thailand, but less developed. Little to no street lights and no sidewalks as TukTuks and bikes came out of the shadows and wizzed past us.

The place we’d be eating at was The Sugar Palm, famous for their Fish Amok, the National Dish of Cambodia. This place was so renowned for this Khmer favorite, that Gordon Ramsay came here to learn how to cook it.

It was nice inside, wooden and clean, much different to the rougher rural buildings we walked past on the way here. Glancing at the menu, Fish Amok required at least 30 minutes to prepare as it needed to be steamed in banana leaves. That was fine by us, that’s how you knew it would be fresh.

While waiting we also ordered Lok Lak, another Cambodian favorite. This was absolutely delicious, one of our favorites in Asia. The marinated, tender beef cubes were packed with flavor by themselves, but dipping them into the peppery sauce brought out crazy tangy, umami flavors. Big fans.

Eventually came the main event, a small pot covered with banana leaves containing a thick, orange liquid. We stuck our spoons in. The texture was like a mousse or custard, very thick and creamy. The main base of coconut milk and spices gave a sweet and aromatic taste. The fish was light and fluffy. It was unlike we had ever eaten, but most importantly, it was delicious.

Pub Street Chaos

The only way to describe Pub Street is chaos. As soon as the sun goes down in Siem Reap, Pub Street becomes the hub and everything gravitates around it. Lights flashing, EDM music blaring, women in tiny dresses trying to convince you in to their club, women that probably aren’t women trying to convince you to do other things, glasses clinking, foods frying. It was electric. We stayed here a long time, hopping from bar to bar. Great night.

Inspiring Stories

Still hungover from our Pub Street adventure, we rallied and pushed on. Southeast Asia is home to the greatest form of transportation: the TukTuk. Using our favorite Rideshare app, Grab, we ordered a TukTuk and and haggled with him to get a price where he would would drive us anywhere the entire day. Incredible. And so we set off through the countryside to our first destination: the Cambodia Landmine Museum.

I don’t know how else to describe the Cambodian countryside other than it looks like the setting of every Vietnam war movie ever. This TukTuk drive was probably the time I have felt most in an ‘exotic’ place to date. Here we were, in a TukTuk, driving down a dirt road in the Cambodian countryside. Wooden shacks and rice fields lined the road. It was a bit grim seeing some of the cows as they were clearly starving, their bones poking out from under the skin. That’s one of those unfortunate things you have to accept about traveling to non-western countries, animals aren’t treated nearly as nice as in the US.

The museum was a sobering experience. At its peak, there were around 20 million landmines scattered around Cambodia due to conflicts with the Khmer Rogue and the Vietnam war. Founded by Aki Ra, a former Khmer Rogue child soldier turned landmine activist, it is dedicated to educating the public on the dangers of these landmines.

The idea for a Landmine Museum and Relief Facility came from Aki Ra, an ex-child soldier.  After years of fighting, he returned to the villages in which he had planted thousands of mines as a soldier and began removing them, by hand, and defusing them with homemade tools. In his home, he displayed some of the items he had made safe and charged the tourists $1 to view them.  He used the money to support the children in his care. 

In the villages where Aki Ra cleared mines, he found many children wounded by landmines, orphaned or abandoned by their families.  He brought them home where he and his wife Hourt cared for them along side their own children.

–Cambodia Land Mine Museum: Our History

Our guide, Mr. Hak Hort, lost his leg in a landmine explosion when we was a kid, an experience that, to this day, is still a common experience in Cambodia. Unfortunately, Hak’s older brother and sister were not so lucky, and were killed in the same explosion. It’s really a humbling experience to hear stories like this from the source. At the beginning we had statistics thrown at us: 20,000 deaths and 65,000+ casualties in Cambodia due to landmines. This was just one of those stories, yet it cut deeply. To think they were 65,000 others like Mr. Hort who have similar stories is haunting.

Keeping with the landmine theme, we jumped back in the TukTuk and headed to APOPO. I use the words amazing and incredible way too much, but if there was one place to believe me when I say it’s absolutely incredible, it’s this place. APOPO is a nonprofit that trains African Giant Pouched Rats, or heroRATS as they call them, to detect landmines throughout Cambodia. The rats are light enough that they don’t set off the landmine and smart enough that they can be trained to find them. We were shown a demonstration and got to hold one of the retired rats.

I think doing the Landmine museum first and then coming to APOPO made for the perfect combination. Learning about how awful the landmine situation is in Cambodia and then seeing the work they’re doing at APOPO was so meaningful. We were so moved by the experience that we ended up adopting one of the rats: Ronin. Each month we will receive an update on how he is doing, where he is working, how many mines he cleared that month, etc.

2025 Update: Ronin has gone on to break the Guinness World Record for the most landmines detected by a rat.

For dinner, we met back up with our friends and headed to Tevy’s Place. This little restaurant had an incredible story. The owner, Tevy, was a victim of the Khmer Rogue regime.

Aged just eight years old, Tevy remembers soldiers ordering them out of their home and into the countryside. Everyone was put to work, a situation that saw the family split up. Eventually, she learned that her father had fallen ill and taken to a so-called hospital. He never returned.

From Leighton Travels

In the years after the Khmer Rogue, Tevy jumped around from job to job, becoming homeless at one point. As a last ditch effort, she moved to Siem Reap and began selling vegetables in the market. This would eventually become her restaurant, Tevy’s Place. Never forgetting where she came from, she is committed to helping others in need, hiring an all-female staff, many of them who also come from challenging backgrounds like herself.

The first thing my eyes went to was the beer, which was only $0.50. It would be dangerous if we lived here. We ordered a Char Kroueng, and our new favorite, Lok Lak. The Char Kroueng was an earthy tasting stir fry. The chicken was tender and the vegetables gave a fresh contrast to the curry paste. It was good but not the best thing we ate. The Lok Lak was incredible. I know, shocking.

Sunrise at Ankgor

Angkor Wat. No visit to Cambodia is done until you’ve seen it. It’s one of the most recognizable monuments in the world. An enormous 400+ acre Hindu – Buddhist monument built in 1150. This day may have been the one we were most excited for on the entire trip. We weren’t excited, however, about being up at 4:00am for the tour. A bus came by and we stumbled on like zombies. We were the first ones on and sat in silence at the back while we drove around town picking up more zombies.

There’s a quiet stillness in the air so early in the morning. We were herded off the bus into a parking lot which contained at least 40 other buses. It was pitch black, there were no artificial lights here except the occasional flash of an iPhone camera. So many people around us, yet no noise. Emily held on to me. Our eyes slowly adjusted to being in the pitch black.

The tour guide, Sen, shuttled us down pathways and over bridges. I had no idea where we were going, my body was moving by itself at this point, but eventually we came to a large opening. The first thing I noticed was the size of the crowd. Hundreds of people were set up waiting for the sun to rise. The tour guide told us the sun rose in 30 minutes, and that we would meet up after. We managed to struggle our way through the crowd and planted ourselves at a prime spot in front of the Reflecting Pond to await the show.

Over time, the black sky went through a colorful array of changes. Pink and yellow streaks danced through the air. As the sun rose higher, the sky became golden, slowly revealing the top of the majestic temple that had previously lay hidden in front of us. It was like watching a painting be created in real time. Eventually the sun broke free and turned the sky blue, painting a perfect reflection of the entire temple on the still water in front of us. It really was a beautiful experience.

Eventually, Sen rallied us all together and explained that our group name was ‘Mango Sticky Rice’. Whenever we heard him yell ‘Mango’, we replied ‘Sticky Rice’, as a signal to show where everyone was. I thought this was just a dumb gimmick at first, but it lowkey helped throughout the tour, and was always a fun time. Anyway we officially started the tour and got a long history lesson on the structure.

As you can imagine, it is absolutely stunning. So much intricate detail in every square inch. The thing that stood out to me most was how symmetric everything was. I would be repeating myself over and over if I described each temple, so just enjoy the photos!

We loaded into the bus and set off to the 2nd of 4 temples, Ta Prohm. This one felt like it had been reclaimed by nature. Massive tree roots and vines intertwined with the stone ruins, making it feel like a war between nature and history.

We hopped in the bus and headed to temple 3 of 4, Banteay Kdei. This was the quietest of the four, it felt like we were the only people there, which was a nice change of pace. It comprised of a large courtyard with those iconic, stone towers and corridors.

Once again the air conditioning of the bus would come to our rescue, as we set off to the last temple of the day, Angkor Thom. This was the last capital of the Khmer Empire. It felt like a massive castle complex. We went through an ancient gate to get to the city, which was surrounded by a giant moat.

The end of the trip was a full circle moment. We’d heard our group name yelled all day and now we’d get to try some Mango Sticky Rice. Sen stopped the bus and gave a bill to a street vendor selling, what looked like bamboo. Sen hopped back on board and began peeling back the bamboo. Inside was the Mango Sticky Rice. He walked down the isle, giving everyone the opportunity to try some. It was actually really good, almost like a desert rice.

One Last Country

It had been a long, hot day. As we got back to the hotel we took a much needed shower, laid in bed, and ordered some hotel room service. It was bliss.

Click here to continue on with our Southeast Asia trip, there’s only one country left!