We got up early, such in order to practice for our tomorrow mornings early sunrise wake up call for the Angkor Wat temples!
Having no time to visit yesterday Battambang itself, Arjan & I decided to get up very early to explore the city's centre, supposed to be charming because of its early-20th-century French architecture. Indeed there is some of it, for instance the former Governor's Residence with its balconies and wooden shutters, but unfortunately like with many architecture in Cambodia, it is in bad shape because of no maintenance at all, very sad. The French left its former colony in 1953 and one wonders if any maintenance has been done since ... This Cambodia's second-largest city with its approx. 140.000 inhabitants is quite disappointing.
Departure at 7.45 a.m. (a quarter before the official departure time, as said before, we are all very disciplined..), to take the supposed-to-be very bad road to Siem Reap housing the famous Angkor Wat temples. For years the improvement of the road has been stopped by corruption (airlines companies paying briberies to the road constructors), but by foreign pressure the road improvements have finally been started, so things are getting slowly but surely better. It took us till about 1 p.m. - so about 7 hours - incl. 2 drink stops to cover the 171 km, so one can calculate our average speed. And happily, there was some rain, but in general the weather was more than OK, one wonders how long it may take in the rainy season, or if your car - suffering of the terrible road conditions - breaks down.
Arriving in the afternoon, we had to organise our 2 full days in Siem Reap as economically as possible. Our travel agency 'Koning Aap' proposed us an all inclusive organised excursion for an exorbitant price, like all their excursions. Like the others ones, we all turned down this offer. No idea why these excursions are so terribly expensive (this one was over USD 70, incl. the indeed high entrance fee for the Angkor Wat temples of USD 20). Anyway, happily with the 4 of us we manage to organise them with the help of the Dutch guide for much more competitive prices and for this one we even could check the quality of the level of the English language of our local guide for tomorrow. We had to send away the 1st one, because he did not understand our questions, but we had more luck with the 2nd.
Then we went off for an excellent lunch - incl. the for Annette & Auke well-known "death for chocolate" pastry in a nearby coffee shop - before organising a helicopter flight the day after tomorrow morning over the Angkor Wat temples and a massage tomorrow evening from 9 till 11 p.m. by blind masseurs. Well, after all, these are our holidays, so we have to treat ourselves well sometimes :-)))
We walked around in the centre of Siem Reap as well. Back in the 1960s, this city was the place to be in Southeast Asia and saw a steady stream of the rich and famous. After 3 decades of slumber, it's well and truly back and one of the most popular destinations on the planet right now. The life-support system for the temples of Angkor, Cambodia's 8th wonder of the world, Siem Reap was always destined for great things, but few people saw them coming this thick and this fast. It has reinvented itself as the epicentre of the new Cambodia, with more guesthouses and hotels than temples, world-class wining and sumptuous spas.
(Though our hotel is certainly not a 5 stars one, it is one of the best so far. In general we can not complain about the quality of our hotels; the electricity was OK except in the eco-lodge and not having hot water anytime when it's steaming hot outside is not a serious problem, neither).
At its heart, Siem Reap is still a little charmer, with old French shop-houses, shady tree lined boulevards and a slow-flowing river. But it is expanding at breakneck speed with new houses and apartments, hotels and resorts sprouting like mushrooms in the surrounding countryside. The tourist tide has arrived and locals are riding the wave. Not only is this great news for the long-suffering Khmers, but is has transformed the town into a pulsing place for visitors.
OK, I have to break off, I have to get up again in about 5 hours ....
A&I - 25-11-08 Siem Reap - cloudy weather thus not that hot
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