Path of the Giant: Cambodia

Hi Everyone,
So in December (i know, i know, that was LAST year, i'm a bit behind...) my parents, Isabel, and I traveled to Cambodia to visit Phenom Penn and Siem Reap.
First we spent two nights in Can Tho. I showed my parents around town, where i work, and the famous floating markets. The markets are Can Tho's main tourist attraction, and i had yet to visit them. So my parents and i woke up very early and hopped on a boat around 6am to give them a visit. After an hour boat ride we arrived at the market. In our tiny boat we were able to weave amongst all the other boats of the market. Some piled to the gunnels with pineapple, others selling noodles or hot coffee. Many of the boats had a "mast" of sorts festooned with the various goods they were selling.

After our brief stint in Can Tho, we ventured up the river to Chau Doc, the last stop before the Cambodian border. The next morning we boarded a boat nice and early, for the 4 hour journey up the river to Phenom Penn(PP). The trip was gorgeous, we followed a few different rivers up over the border, and stopped twice for the border crossing.

Arriving in PP we were greeted by the gold pagodas of the Royal Palace, which we visited the next day. PP is vastly different from HCMC. It's much more quiet, laid back, and very compact. We stayed in a gorgeous boutique hotel within walking distance of all the sights, and had a great time exploring the town. We drank lots of beer, did some shopping, and saw the royal palace, before moving on to Siem Reap the next day.

We again took the boat, as we figured it would be more comfortable than the bus, although we later found out the bus takes 3 hours to the boat's 6! At least we could ride on the roof of the tiny boat, and see the fast lake we cruised through. Siem Reap is like a tourists playground! It's the closest city to the legendary Angkor Wat, as well as 70 other temples and ruins. As such it has great hotels, great night life and food, and great shopping. We spent 3 nights in Siem Reap, and had a great time! We had a great driver, Pop, who would pick us up every morning and take us around the ruins, which we spent 3 days exploring.

We saw all the big temples, and a bunch of smaller ones. My favorite day had to be the last. We saw sunrise at Pre Rup, which we had alll to ourselves. Then we made our way to Banteay Srei, a gorgeous well preserved temple, that we also had almost to ourselves. As it was early, the guards let us into the inner temple area, where we could get very close to the intricate carvings. This temple was by far the best preserved of all the places we saw. We finished up that day by passing through two other nice temples, but they are almost nothing compared to the awesomeness of the first two.

Later that day we headed to a good workshop that trains and employs artisans with disabilities. We bought a few souvenirs, and boarded a plane to Hanoi. I already have pictures up from that leg of the trip, more detail to follow this post.