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THE heat by 10am could have stifled a bear and I was shambling away from the long causeway leading to the vast, brooding Angkor Wat, over the puddled car park towards the small and cheery Angkor Café.
I was as vulnerable as a lame moose to a pack of wolves. The hawker urchins closed in with their clutches of tat and almost brought me down. To a wearyingly persistent figure, I made the elementary mistake of losing it amongst the undernourished and telling him. “Oh, go away!”
“I cannot go away. This is my country,” came a clipped, stern, and brutally honest reply. At a loss for words, I stumbled backwards into the café and sat in blissful aircon slurping cold beer in self-reproach.
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| Statue guarding Angkor Thom |
Cambodians are a proud and battered folk, not a mendicant pushover people and most especially not in Siem Reap, the pleasant if dusty market town, once distinguished only by its Royal Residence, that has become the tourist dormitory to the great Angkor temples complex seven kilometres down the road. Nowhere else in Cambodia will locals get used to foreigners at such a density per square metre.
Such is the accommodation boom that it is as though all the major hotels in Hong Kong had been squeezed into Zuhai. Siem Reap hotels have mushroomed to the point where finding walk-in space at a decent Siem Reap hotel jet-fresh from Paris, should not pose a problem.
This imperfectly, and noisily, complements the myriad Angkor temples on display in the steaming rainforest. Herewith our Siem Reap guide for the uninitiated from Angkor hotels to Siem Reap bars, restaurants and nightlife.
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| Stylish Sofitel/ photo: Sofitel |
The modernising Siem Reap airport, about the size of a small school, is split into international and domestic sections because as well as the three flights a day to and from Phnom Penh (US$72, single), there are direct flights to Ho Chi Minh, Bangkok, Singapore and Seoul.
A visa on arrival is US$20 (citizens of some countries don't need visas, though). Departure tax is US$25 for international flights and US$10, domestic. If your hotel is not meeting you, a taxi into town is US$5 for the 15-minute ride and no messing. You could also go from and back to Phnom Penh with a car and driver. At around US$70 a trip, it is quite a cost cutter if there are two or more, taking four hours over splendid roads that show off the countryside. Do stop off at the town of Skung, which specializes in fried tree spider.
Cambodia effectively runs on US dollars with an exchange rate to Cambodian riels of US$1=Crl4,100. That means that pretty much everything from a Coke to bangles and beads costs at least a dollar. Keep plenty of US$1 bills on you and do not bother to change money into riels. You will accumulate enough of those in small change.
Getting around Siem Reap
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| Ta Prohm: probing roots |
Getting around in Siem Reap is as simple as falling off a bicycle, but don’t. To sweat, you can hire one for US$2 a day. You are not allowed to ride your own motorbike but a moto-taxi is 1,000 riels for a journey and around $6 a day. The local version of a tuk-tuk is a “surrey with a fringe on top” pulled by a converted motorbike chugging along at $1 a trip and up to $12 for a full day. Taxis, usually a swanky air-conditioned Toyota Camry with a driver, are arranged – rapidly – through the hotel for at around US$25 for a day, or $15 for a half day. As always, establish all charges before the hire starts and you will usually find the experience quite uncomplicated.
The Tonle Sap lake, an economic lung for the country is, at the height of the floods when the river actually reverses its course, just twenty minutes from Siem Reap. Near the "floating village" and its stilted houses, passengers board creaking ferries, a five-hour waddle to Phnom Penh. However, the entire economic purpose of Siem Reap is the Angkor temple business and everywhere, tourists, glassy-eyed with temple-viewing wander red-faced mopping their brows, necks – and sometimes underarms – in appreciation. The Khmer kings were prolific temple builders. Having assumed the mantle of deva-rajas (God kings), a concept imported from India, like the Pharaohs they constructed spectacular monuments to drive that point home – and inspire their subjects.
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| Tonle Sap Lake is a 30-minute drive away |
Angkor temple guide
How many Angkor temples can you view in a day? Kathy, the energetic Canadian doctor in the room next to me seemed to have done the lot in three days from dawn to dusk, the two times of day when the monuments are best viewed and photographed. There can be too much of a good thing however. Visitors might consider an Angkor temple shortlist within reach of an all-day taxi and a one-day pass.
Heading the top six would be the brooding and spread-out Angkor Wat (built in the mid-12th Century) and Angkor Thom, the walled capital of Jayavarman VII the greatest of the Khmer deva-rajas that has as its centrepiece the stunning Bayon Temple and its "mountains" of large stone heads.
The other key stops should be Ta Prohm, now overrun by the jungle and giant probing roots, the rambling monastery of Preah Khan, and the delicately carved Banteay Srei (35km from town). The main Angkor temples are just ten minutes from Siem Reap but Banteay Srei, about 40 minutes out, will cost $35 by taxi. The drive is through lush rice fields and past old houses on stilts.
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| Banteay Srei carving |
Angkor Wat was built by Suryavarman II in the mid-12th Century. It is a vast complex. Expect to walk (and bake) a fair bit. A sunhat is a must. A long carving depicting the mythological churning of the oceans is on the east wall. Angkor Wat is best viewed early morning or late evening when the stone comes to life in the long shadows and orange hues of sunset. One way to beat the walking is to hop on a chopper with Helicopters Cambodia Ltd, a New Zealand company with Kiwi pilots. The aerial views of Angkor Wat (and its moat) are breathtaking. Or do it elephant back. The climb up to the top of Phnom Bakheng (sunset hill) is worth it. For some reason the Angkor temples feature steps that are both high as well as narrow, so tread carefully and don't lean back. You will need to use your hands, especially to ascend Angkor Wat's core temple in its central quincunx. Helicopter tours can also be arranged for the slightly farther Preah Vihar near the Thai border where staff of the HALO trust have been hard at work clearing mines. Stick to well-marked trails.
You will be as surprised at the vastness of the Angkor complex. Kathy hacked it all in a tuk-tuk but I thanked every Hindu deity for my car and driver. The heat becomes a damp electric blanket as the sun rises so be done by 10am or so if you can which is also when the accursed tour buses arrive. The South Gate arch, built for the width of an elephant, is one of the most eclectic traffic bottlenecks in the world. Bear in mind too a couple of cautions. The perimeters of some of the outer sites are often quite deserted and unpoliced so be circumspect, particularly over young men offering guidance. Remember that this is, after all, rubble city underfoot. If you have problems with your legs or bad balance, give thought to where and how far you want to go.
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| Victoria Hotel: colonial / photo: Victoria |
Siem Reap hotel guide
There are an amazing number of top-of-the-wallet hotel options for such a small town, mostly in what is called the French Quarter and beyond, a bit towards Angkor. Across the Angkor Park from the Royal Residence is The Raffles Grand Hotel d'Angkor, a restored grand colonial from 1928 with chequered floor tiles, the original Otis cage lift and a smooth understatement that goes with great self assurance.
The old and rich prefer the original high ceiling wing and the nouveau riche, the new wing, a more svelte imitation of the old one, all around a vast swimming pool.
The Sofitel Royal Angkor is a thoroughly French operation close to the Angkor park which has been beautifully landscaped with walkways between trees water features and a pagoda. It still has arguably the best buffets this side of the Suez. La Residence d’Angkor, an Orient-Express Hotels, Train & Cruises hotel is painstakingly Khmer in style using extensive timber and red-brown stone. Its classical dark-wood reception area leads to 55 rooms, all the same. Pansea is a breezy, elegant delight.
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| Amansara: clean lines, cool stone |
Another top-drawer entrant is the Amansara (once the guest villa of King Norodom Sihanouk) run by Amanresorts. It offers an understated, homey feel in a private garden compound with 24 suites finished in terrazzo and timber. Each suite has its own courtyard and there is a good indoor-outdoor fusion between the two. This is for a trifling US$650 or more a night. Or opt for one of the 12 Pool Suites. The new Spa at Amansara offers holistic Khmer remedies, massage, reflexology, and a range of exotic scrubs (try peppermint).
The Victoria Angkor Resort & Spa is run by the Vietnam-based Victoria Hotels & Resorts group that has created a boutique hotel, big on style. The exterior is all yellow stucco and slatted shutters. The lobby is a cheerful clutter of colonial fin de siecle. The 130 rooms are chic, offering open views from private balconies, and Internet access. There are ten suites fearing special themes such as Japanese and, for nostalgia buffs, a 1931 Citroen is on hand for an evening spin.
A big new boy on the block is the Le Meridien Angkor , a 223-room whopper in glass and marble done in the simple Khmer massif style. Elgar plays in the lobby and there is a grass courtyard the size of a football pitch. Everywhere has temple scaled spaces and the doors are awesomely high. Rooms have wireless Internet and a complimentary umbrella and the swimming pool is designed for Suryarvarman II.
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| FCC: Smart watering hole / photo: FCC |
Most hotels have Japanese-speaking staff and Japanese food. As a rule, meals in most Siem Reap hotels are decent and clean though you must take care not to drink water other than bottled. Watch out for the 10 percent government tax and the 10 percent service charge double whammy that lurks to trip the unwary.
The smaller, boutique hotel is very much in vogue. The 18-room Shinta Mani doubles as a training institute, providing free hotel insights to young, underprivileged Cambodians. It has gained a reputation for luxury and fine dining. There is a signature Shinta Mani Spa with a with floral bath and steam room. Internet access in the rooms is free. This is a sister property to the Hotel de la Paix just three blocks away.
In contrasting style and next to the Royal residence is the FCC Angkor, sister to the famed bar restaurant in Phnom Penh. Facing the river in the converted home of the French colonial resident they have created a huge bright bar and terraced restaurant with quality shops downstairs and the entrance to their popular spa with the obligatory hot stones. Connected but hidden from the road are 28 rooms and two suites built in a bright white cubist style around a pool. The FCC is a contemporary place for individualists.
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| Le Meridien interiors/ photo: Meridien |
A charming boutique option is the French-run Angkor Village Resort (US$60-$75 up) with lotus ponds, banana trees, palm fronds and lush greenery. The rooms are chic and tasteful and vary in decor and size. There are safes in most rooms but no televisions. The resort has its own Apsara theatre-restaurant for classical dance and music performances. It is reckoned to be the most authentic venue in Siem Reap because you don’t eat during the performance. Shows run as well at the Bayon II, the Tonle Sap Restaurant, the Chao Praya Restaurant, lakeside at the Sofitel and the Koulen Restaurant.
Most local properties adhere to the style of Thai wat roof over French colonial which occasionally makes you wonder whether you are passing a general post office. Some have a façade of newly dried plaster and anti-reflecting glass that hint at a provincial Chinese city. Half a dozen of the genre, targeting tour groups, are going up along the airport road. Still, they are modestly priced hotels and can be quite satisfactory places to stay. Examples are the City Angkor Hotel that has that civic building look and the City Royal Hotel, a newer carbon copy across the road. The small and basic Angkoriana on the Angkor Road is of the genre and other offerings include the older and traditional Ta Prohm Hotel, Princess Angkor Hotel and the large and modern Angkor Century Hotel.
Recently opened in September 2006 is the Angkor Palace Resort and Spa, Siem Reap, set in 11 garden hectares, 15 minutes from the Angkor temples. Rooms are spacious and well appointed offering comfort and style. There is the resort's Kainnora Spa on hand should you wish to indulge in some therapeutic treatments after a long day's sightseeing. The hotel's ballroom can hold 200 people theatre style and up to 300 for a cocktail making it a useful Angkor meeting venue.
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| Red Piano: Cheap rooms, good bar |
The clean and friendly Apsara Angkor Hotel is a good choice. It opened in late 2002 with 132 rooms in 38 different colours, lavish Cambodian silk, a laptop-size in-room safe and dataport for Internet access. It showcases immense carved Khmer furniture. Its superior rooms with a pool view are particularly pleasant with shuttered French windows looking onto a balcony. The pool is big enough for Angkor’s bid for the Olympics. A cottage-style example of Siem Reap with Chinese characteristics is the Angkor Diamond by the sluggish Siem Reap River. The rooms have cable TV, aircon, IDD, tea and coffee-making facilities, hair-driers and a minibar.
If you are looking for one of the abounding guests houses in town, get hold of a copy of Pocket Cambodia Guide for Siem Reap which is a giveaway everywhere. A few examples are worth a mention here. Red Piano Café Guesthouse in the heart of the Old Market area (US$18 or $20 for two people) is neat, clean and bright if tight with cable TV. Nearby is the batty Dead Fish Tower Inn (tel: [063] 963-060), a mini Apocalypse Now, with rooms next door which can be small, if immaculate, heat boxes, or bigger, with air con for $15. They promise a free head massage every day. Another budget option is the Auberge Mont Royal d'Angkor which has its charms in a quiet side road and runs from US$20 up.
New hotels are coming on line all the time. Stylish new Hotel de la Paix is a five-star boutique property, featuring the three-storey Indochine Spa overlooking
a Khmer-inspired swimming pool and water garden. It has 107 spacious rooms including nine Duplex Spa Suites with private terraces and huge soaking tubs.
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| Raffles dominates the main square |
The five Courtyard Garden Suites also have large outdoor bathtubs on private garden terraces. Showcasing original works of art, the hotel's The Arts Lounge
is dedicated to promoting Khmer art forms and culture.
Set in the characterful centre of Siem Reap, the hotel is just 7km from Angkor Wat.
Another new hotel is locally-owned, four-star Angkorland Hotel, a four-storey property with 70 rooms located in a leafy street near the downtown area. The huge 274-room Sokha Angkor Hotel and Spa is set to open soon next to the Victoria.
One hotel sales manager, complaining of his low occupancy rates said, “Yes, more and more people are coming to see Angkor but they keep building even more and more hotels. Ha!” Which is bad for the look of the place but, my goodness, can’t you bargain! Try bringing them down 20 percent to 30 percent on any quote and, in the wet low season, significantly more perhaps.
Siem Reap bars and nightlife
As the cities re-established themselves in Cambodia after 1979, so did French food, frequently under the control of Frenchmen, and Siem Reap is notable for this with about twenty French-influenced restaurants. Some of the best French dining is to be found in hotels of course, notably Le Bistro de Siem Reap in the Victoria Angkor (tel: [063] 760-405). Remarkably good food can be found in street restaurants such as The Only One (tel: [063] 963-518) which was the first French restaurant to re-establish in town, in the Old Market, a cosy shop house and a gem for its cold cuts and imported cheeses. A contrast is L’Orientalist, (tel: [012] 440-627), which is elegant to the point of being posh, set up in a wooden Khmer house and serving Moroccan French food. Two interesting establishments found close to each other on Sivatha Street mixing French with other cuisines are Café Indochine (tel: [012] 804-952), and Carnets d’Asie (tel: [016] 764-701).
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| Angkor Palace Resort and Spa/ photo: hotel |
There are as many cuisines in Seam Reap as there are visitors, Thai, Korean, burgers and chips, and heaps of Japanese. The other food that is well worth seeking out though, given where you are, is Khmer. You will usually find it at its best and most accessible to a foreigner in restaurants where it rides on the same menu as French and Thai dishes. It does distinguish itself from Thai cuisine by a force of flavour and a certain smokiness which can have a surprising appeal to many if not all. It can be found everywhere in parts from the sophisticated terrace of the FCC (tel: [063] 760 280) from where I journeyed across the river to Viroth’s (tel: [012] 826-346), a minimalist, partly open sided but stylish place which is relatively new, highly thought of and serves a high quality of Khmer food.
Of bars and nightlife, it must be said that there is a plenty but also that Siem Reap does go to bed early and, if you have been clambering over Angkor, so will you.
The centre for bars is in the Old Market area next to the French Quarter and it focuses on a street near Sivatha Street called Pub Street because nobody knows what else to call it in any language. There are about fifteen to twenty bars down or around it. If you were taking a walk, you’d see at one end Molly Malone’s, an Irish type place with Guinness and then you’ll totter on to Boosters and The Balcony and across the street to In Touch that has a huge bar and good Thai food.
They all serve food, a wide variety of it, by the way. Opposite is the iconic bar of the street, the Red Piano with ochre walls, live music and a heaving expatriate crowd by mid evening. Up the street some more is the Temple Bar with Angkor décor and the Angkor What? – the first bar in the area. It is proud of its accumulated graffiti.
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| Swish Hotel de la Paix/ photo: hotel |
The Elephant Bar at The Raffles is a popular watering hole (though it is under renovation at the moment) while at the opposite end of the spectrum the Sok San Palace is a mad restaurant-disco-massage-parlour-karaoke that is high camp and a tad naughty. Close by is the dimly-lit Zanzybar disco. The other local disco is Martini, across the river, though "disco" is perhaps a rather grand word. Grab a beer and pull up a plastic chair. An upscale massage can be had at Japanese-run Chai, opposite the Sofitel (tel: 380-287), one hour, US$20. For gays, the sole but recommended place is the Linga Bar and Restaurant (tel: [012] 246-912) near Pub Street which is proud of its cocktails and tapas.
I enjoyed going back to the Old Market in the late afternoon. I had a drink in the Red Piano when it was quiet but didn’t see a piano. I had a cake in the Blue Pumpkin café and I followed it with three scoops of ice cream at $1.25 and a glass of ice cold coffee in the Tea and Coffee World, a funky sort of joint in red and black run by young Vietnamese. Then I ended up in Le Grand Café sipping a Courvoisier as my driver watched my intake with growing alarm. I was being cautious though, watchful for the approach, any minute, of a dusty, steely eyed youth to tell me “You can go away. This is my country.”
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