SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA Vlog | Why it Became a Favorite Place 🇰🇭

this week we flew from Vietnam to Cambodia to Siem Reap to visit the largest religious site in the entire world anger what and while we were there we went to the Khmer New Year celebration and it was so much fun it's a state of the end and you'll see why you need to put this city on your bucket list as well we're John and Beth and we are the retirement Travelers if you've been following along you know that we've most recently been in Taiwan and Vietnam now we have written blog posts about each of the cities that we visited and you can go to our website and check that out also be sure you sign up for our newsletter the first detail you need to know is Cambodia is a Buddhist country of 17 million people it sits between Thailand and Vietnam and Siem Reap is the second largest city the next detail you need to know is that you can get a Visa up on arrival you can pre-apply for it it costs just a little more if you get it ahead of time and the line really wasn't that long so we recommend you just do it on the spot the next part of the story in Cambodia cash is King specifically the US dollar now you can get Cambodian Reales but most businesses actually prefer the US dollar now we walked out of the airport we got in line and got a taxi where we kind of hit the jackpot with our Taxi Driver his name was hat and he was so awesome the entire time we were there that he's the only one we ever used we arranged with him to pick us up the next day to take us exploring and he ended up through at the end of our trip taking us to the airport yes and then he gave us the short ride maybe 15-20 minutes into town uh to our hotel which was called the two Seasons Hotel now we're just guessing that that means like hot and dry and hot and wet and but the good news is it was half the price of the Four Seasons so let's talk about Angkor Wat this complex was built in the 12th century and it took about 30 years to build it took 300 000 people many of them were slaves to build this beautiful site also it took about 6 000 elephants now one of the things they did is that they saw these Technical and Engineering problems while they were still making this artistic Masterpiece and when you say Masterpiece we're talking a huge Masterpiece because this complex is incredibly large it's constructed with five to ten million stone blocks that's more than all the Egyptian pyramids combined you know many consider this one of the seven wonders of the world and it's a UNESCO world heritage site there are many Temple sites in this area so we bought a pass that gets us into all of them Pat dropped this by the office to buy the tickets they're about 35 each and basically they just stamp them as you go through different checkpoints through throughout the complex now we have visited 4 different sites in one day the first tip we have is to go at Sunrise now we did not do that we did mid-morning and it got hot fast it was probably a hundred degrees the day that we were there now you can get a tuk-tuk from your hotel but you can also get a driver Like Pat who will take you and provide air conditioning which was awesome for us to be able to pop in after each visit and be able to be in an air conditioning now he provided us ice cold water after every stop the first place we visited was anger watt now this is the absolute Crown Jewel of the area it's surrounded by a very large hand dug moat and you cross one of the bridges to get into the complex now as we were walking around just in amazement at all the temples again this is a very big complex we realize that this is a this is an active site you know we saw people at the altars praying leaving by behind you know offerings Bev and all women are required to wear a longer skirt to cover their knees and when you go into the temples you have to remove your hats but other than that there's there's really no special dress codes you know dress as cool as you can like we said is very hot and it's very large but it's just so many interesting things to see various temples the way it's laid out just a magnificent construction that was done nearly a thousand years ago that left us in awe now when we left the temple we another YouTube YouTube Zary and zondra and they were so charming and so cute and we are hoping to see them again and we hope they show us around Jamaica sometimes yeah they offered the next stop after anger watt after we finished about seven bottles of water because it was each it was really hot it was a place called The Bayan Temple now this place was really unusual as well it's a little smaller than anger Watt and probably in a little more disrepair but the but the unusual feature are these faces on every Tower so they have four different Stone carved faces on each Tower looking out in all the directions it was it was pretty cool the next place we stopped was was timely on gate now to get to this gate you have to go over a bridge and there are these figurines that are perched along every Pier of the bridge but it was an interesting place traffic went through this gate and we had to kind of wait our turn to walk through yeah it was very very narrow not enough room for a person and a car to go through no but Pat dropped us off through and then before we saw those monkeys remember the monkeys oh yes the monkeys they were running beside the car and we thought they were going to jump in he said don't don't encourage them they they're known they're known to steal things out of tuk-tuks and cars the last Temple complex we stopped at was called to prom now this was actually one of my favorite ones it's so uh so unusual if you have heard of the movie Tomb Raider if you remember that series that's where it was filmed and there it felt like we were in a movie scene it did feel like we were in a movie set they had these giant trees that are all growing up through the Rocks a very very unusual and very interesting but definitely uh go there if you if you come to this place you've got to go to the prom as well the last place we he stopped on our day was to lunch and we had a late lunch Pat took us to his favorite restaurant and we had such good good food yeah he knew he knew all the Local Foods to try and and we of course ate them all day two turned out to be more fun than day one even though it was it was a bucket list item to see anchor wat but as we were driving around the first day we saw these people just setting up these big stages we saw boots of food being set up it was pretty impressive yeah we we knew we were going to be here during the Khmer New Year celebration which is a three-day celebration held every uh mid-april but we had no idea what we were getting ready to to experience I know Pat told us we needed to go to the store and buy a big water gun a Soaker a Soaker he said the bigger the better in fact he told us to put beer in it but I don't think we ever yeah that attacked with beer no we did not get beer attacked but we kept plenty wet we got plenty wet but what they do in this town is they go crazy like it was so much fun it reminded me of our childhood back in the day when we could ride in the back of a truck a pickup truck and it was the norm or you know you could go buy a big old Soaker gun and get all your neighbors I mean it was a normal sight to see maybe 10 15 people in the back of a pickup truck all with Soaker guns you know squirting people around town and the entire city got involved and at all ages from young to old to the entire city there was street food and concerts and booths but the the main thing that happens is everybody gets soaked everybody gets soaked and I mean it was old and young and people could not stop smiling oh I I know people were so friendly and actually kind of considered before they they blasted you with the water you know my my favorite memory was I got into a stare down battle with a little six-year-old girl from Cambodia and she was looking at me like should I shoot these of Americans or not and then she decided but I had a water gun so she let me have it so I squirted her back she got me she won hi happy New Year yeah but people were out on the streets and enjoying food enjoying the music and we even took a boat ride down the river and we walked across this beautiful Bridge so we just had the best time oh listening to concerts and we tried some we tried some food we tried some Cambodian beer uh it was an epic evening epic so we just we had the best time so if you can go to Cambodia for New Year's we highly recommend it don't don't worry about the heat I mean April is the hottest month and and some magazines say don't don't go there in April we say go there in April mid April go to anger watt uh spend a couple days at the festival and you will won't regret it some where are we headed to next John we're going to Thailand Thailand we're heading to Bangkok so be sure you stay tuned and we'll see you next time be sure to hit subscribe and follow along on our retirement Journey around the world

Channel: Retirement Travelers

Views: 45,454

Keywords: cambodia vlog, angkor wat sunrise, siem reap cambodia, angkor wat, cambodia travel guide, siem reap, cambodia travel vlog, travel guides vietnam and cambodia, things to do in cambodia, cambodia tourism, cambodia travel tips, siem reap 2023, siem reap airport, siem reap trip, cambodian pride, cambodia travel requirements, angkor wat vlog, angkor wat history, siem reap street food, cambodian new year 2023, ta prohm, retirement travelers, cambodia 2024, cambodia travel 2024

Id: S2OfJXOqGV0

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023