Travel: Siem Reap, Cambodia Trip

Last August 2, me and hon went to Siem Reap, Cambodia with our friends. It was hon's third country to enter where second is Singapore and first is of course, Malaysia. Here is a summary of the things about our trip as I will try to come up with more detailed posts soon.


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TIME
We boarded the plane in LCCT at 0700 and arrived at Siem Reap at 0800. The flight was 2 hours and Cambodia is 1-hour behind of Malaysia's time. Our Travel to Siem Reap is only for 2 days and 2 nights which is really not enough for a vacation or cover a lot of the places in Siem Reap nonetheless it was still a whole lot of fun for us.  We just had to make the most out of the 2 days that we have in Siem Reap.

BUDGET
We brought around RM800 which was converted to around USD270 when we went to Siem Reap. It is considered a huge amount for the 2 of us and since it will only be for a couple of days though there were a few factors that we considered when we did the budgeting:

1. Food Allowance - we budgeted about $5 per person per meal though it was cheaper than I expected maybe because we were on a group. 
2. Transportation Allowance - though we settled for tuktuks, it is still best to have some extra money if in case we settle for something other than that. 
3. Accommodation Allowance - 2 of our friends who went ahead of us managed to find a good deal with an Inn called Road to Angkor Inn which they manage to haggle and got the room for $12 a night and take note its a 2-bed room and there are 5 of us; so me and my guy friend have to stay in one bed all the ladies had 2 share with on the other bed. Good job ladies! 
4. Emergency Allowance - this was helpful during our travel since wife had to go to a local clinic for her stomach which turned out to be gastritis and the local clinic charged us with a whopping amount of $55 dollars or around RM200 for the Consultation and Service Charge which still excludes the medicines they gave her! Luckily me and my wife are covered with Medical benefits from my company so I will just have to submit in the receipts to get a reimbursement. 

The clinic where I brought my wife to. Image courtesy of Marlon Rectra. 

FOOD

The food was nice of course we did not go for the expensive ones since we were on a budget and in fact, the food we had was more than enough for the 5 of us and we paid really cheap for it. Funny thing was that when we asked our tuktuk driver to bring us to a place to have lunch on the first day, he tried to bring us in to the fancy restaurants. So we told him that we want to eat somewhere cheap and local which he managed to understand so he brought us to the old market where there was a food court which offered cheap local foods.

At last we manage to eat a local and cheap joint Image courtesy of Marlon Rectra. 

PLACES
When we first set foot in Siem Reap, it reminded me of my hometown back in the Philippines; paddy fields here and there, motorbikes and bicycles everywhere. It really felt like I went back to my hometown and not to Cambodia! Honestly, there is so much to discuss about the places in Siem Reap that it will have to go to another post.

Since this is just a summary of our trip, I will try to post next time with the details and more images. Stay tuned!

Me and my Hon. And again, image courtesy of my buddy, Marlon Rectra.

Update: Here is our follow up to this post.

Siem Reap; Day 1