Biking around Siem Reap

The temples of Siem Reap are beautiful and majestic and wonderful and insert similar adjectives here but after the third one they all start to look the same so on our second day in Cambodia we decided to rent bikes to go around and experience the temples in a different (and definitely more tiring) way. Fortunately, Siem Reap is a bike-friendly city, even for someone who’s perpetually afraid of getting hit by cars like me.

There are no bike lanes but drivers are generally courteous towards the bikers on the outer lanes. The friendly staff of our hotel, 1961, took care of our bike rentals and even gave us a biking refresher course the night before.

What we ate in Siem Reap

Tags

Food, Travel

I don’t get why food in Cambodia is expensive. For a country with a minimum wage of 60 USD per month (about 2500 PHP), I thought that the food would be cheap. We spent about 6 USD per person per meal. I did not expect that being a tourist in Siem Reap would be more costly than being a tourist in Bangkok. Boo me for not researching on the local grub before our trip.

They say that Khmer cuisine is a cross between Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. Since I have never been to Vietnam (and the food in Thailand is way more pag-ibig than the food in Cambodia) I say that Khmer food is characterized by ginger and confusion. Amok, a popular Khmer dish, is curry that fell in love with ginger.

First stop: Random restaurant along Pub Street. Fresh from our traumatic experience with crossing the border between Thailand and Cambodia, we headed off to Pub Street to look for food. Pub Street is Siem Reap’s tourist watering hole, much like Bangkok’s Khao San Road, except more expensive.

None of my friends can remember what this restaurant’s name is, we also don’t have photos with its name on and checking our foursquare history and Google maps proved futile. What we do have are stolen photos of one scruffy koya at the next table. Also, this is where we first learned that when they say ‘chicken with ginger’ in Siem Reap they really mean ‘ginger with chicken.’

Favorite Travel Photos – My 7 Super Shots

Tags

Photography

Hi, my name is Ayla, I’m part Caucasian and mostly Asian that’s why I like to take photos (mostly of food). I use a Nikon P100, it’s a superzoom and it is almost always in automatic mode. I don’t wanna be bothered with the shutter and aperture settings even though I took film photography classes in college. I wrote this post so that Drew won’t “look like a dork who has nothing better to do.”

1 – Takes my breath away

La Paz Sand Dunes, Paoay, Ilocos Norte, Philippines

Aside from being my blog’s header photo, this photo reminds me of how in awe I was when I first saw the La Paz Sand Dunes. I didn’t expect to find so much beauty in barren lands. On a more literal perspective, this photo takes my breath away because we had to climb that hill made of loose sand when we went sandboarding a.k.a. I was out of breath after. Link to the post.

2 – Makes me dream

Bohol Beach Club, Panglao Island, Bohol, Philippines

This is the perfect reading spot for me. I dream of spending afternoons reading in a hammock by the sea and the Bohol Beach Club is perfect for that. Link to the post.

3 – Makes me think

Bayon Temple, Angkor Thom, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Were they holding hands? Did I interrupt a moment? Will I ever get answers to my questions? Link to the post.

Monk Business

Tags

Travel

Monks were on the same category as unicorns for me, I see pretty photos of them everywhere yet I know so little about them. Since it was my first time to see monks in the flesh (and in the robe) I took every chance I got to snap a photo of them. It surprised me that some of them were smoking cigarettes and using DSLRs since I’ve always assumed that they’re supposed to live a life of goodness and poverty or something. From what I learned from talking to people in Thailand and Cambodia (and from Googling ‘how do Buddhist monks live’) here are my three wow-I-learned-something-new-about-monks:

A Tale of Two Hotels

Tags

Travel

Because accommodations can also be attractions a.k.a take a look at our pretty hotels. Also, I realized that in Bangkok, the temples were maximalist and our hotel was minimalist while in Siem Reap, the temples were minimalist (puro bato kasi di ba) and our hotel was maximalist. Walalungs.

Bangkok-Siem Reap: Notes From A First Time Traveler

Our tour guide made us do this, we promise.

A collection of random thoughts and tips typed on my iPod during our recent travel to Thailand and Cambodia. We spent two and a half days in Bangkok, half a day for crossing the border, and three days in Siem Reap. Our group’s made up of five girls (and security became an issue once we crossed the border to Cambodia) and these are some of the things I wish I’ve read somewhere before we traveled.