Note: This is a map of the
Siem Reap town and map of
Angkor temples area for easier reference of the places I'm talking about.
Too early for worms?
After breakfast we went round town but mainly ended up in the most exciting place in Siem Reap, the Old Market. Yup, found the worms there.
All the pamelo are sold like this in the market.
Vegetables are sold from day to night.
The famous french bread that everyone talks about when visiting Siem Reap.
A lot of stall sells dried meat. From chicken, pork, beef to fish. A lot of their own marinated meat too.
Dried marinated salted fish I think.
Plenty of local sauces.
Grade A++ rice! You don't get good rice like this in Malaysia. I personally checked out their pulut and I tell you, it's all pulut. The ones sold in Malaysia are all pulut mixed with cheap rice to cheat people.
The butchery section. Can u see the snout?
Both of this noodles are really good!
Jem stones.... cheap cheap cheap.... if only I knew the bargaining tactics.
Statues, some really not worth buying.
Survinors. Lots of silk scarves. I saw a few stalls selling Thai stuff... and even Malaysian batik sarung. That's only to cheat the ang mo's.
After lunch at the Old Market, we walked back to the guest house to freshen up and waited for Vicheka.
First stop for the day was Wat Damnak. Nothing interesting at this Wat. There was a school as usualy beside the Wat and I noticed that this Wat is slightly richer compared to the rest. It has a quite nice meditating area for the monks.
We headed to an even richer looking Wat. Wat Preah Prom Rath.
Saw a lot of "rich" homes for the head. The small pagodas located at the sides of the Wat are actually burial ground. Urns of ashes are actually buried into these pagodas. Some of the pagodas weren't sealed but with a door opening. I'm guess when the next person from the family dies, the urn is removed and a new urn of ash is buried.
The next and last local Wat we went to was the famous Wat Bo. It's located quite inside the kampong area.
Next stop was Phsar Samaki. I was planning to buy local tidbits here as I heard this market sold more of those compared to the Old Market. Sadly, most of the stall were closed on the weekends, and those that were open sold vegetables. Even so, most of them have already close shop and started gambling!
Since it was still very early, Vicheka suggest we can go to the war museum. I wanted him to bring us to Mr.Akira's place. He also collects landmines and all but Vicheka said the road is all flooded up and bla bla bla... aiyor, War Museum gives him commission. Enough said.
You will need to pay USD3 to enter. There will be people at the entrance to give you a free guide and explain all the weapons and the landmines to you. Most of them are ex-soldiers or people who got hurt by these weapons before.
Anti air craft flank to blast planes during the USSR.
Bouncing bomb. These bombs are like those we see in the olden Vietnam war movies. They can blast the whole body into smithereens and hurt everyone in 15 meters radius.
Bombs.
The war museum was actually ok... but many of their weapons and stuff there are like scrap metal. I still found it ok but many reviews from the U.S said this place is juts not worth going. I believe this is because war museums in the develop countries are much better.
We left the war museum and headed to the Royal Palace at the Route to see Cher Reng'.
Cher Reng' aka bats! They are fruit bats that fly off when night comes and returns before run rise. We waited for quite sometime for them to take off...
While waiting, we went across the road to see Preah Ang Chek Preah Ang Chorm shrine.
The shrine was really busy with a lot of locals purchasing lotus flowers and stuff for prayers from the stalls outside the shrine.
We got really bored waiting for the bats to fly off... but got lucky with I saw this moving stall on the other side of the Royal Independence Garden.
Roti canai! The Cambodian style.
We gave up waiting after 1 hour and 30 minutes later and headed to the only fast food outlet we saw. Express food at the Express oil service station. We ask Vicheka to drop us there and told him we will go back to the guest house ourselves. We picked up beer at Max Mart again on the way back. Good way to reduce the heatiness of the body ma ;P
