On Day 2 the plan was to explore some of the old temples around Cambodia and make a stop at the Killing Fields. The Killing fields were sad and beautiful all at the same time. We weren’t too sure how far everything we wanted to do was from our hotel, those animated city maps the hotels give you don’t give a realistic scale of the city. We were trying to figure out we were going to get to each of our destinations.
We started our day with a stop at the breakfast that was provided by the hotel. It was tons of exotic fruits, yogurts, coffee, juices, and even an omelet station. Afterward finishing our delicious breakfast we headed to the concierge to see what suggestions they could offer us to get our adventures started.
After talking with the Concierge about what we wanted to accomplish for the day, he suggested we hire a driver. He even called and set it all up! Hiring a driver sounds expensive and I’m sure here in the US it would have been much more expensive. However, in Cambodia it only cost about $50. Our driver picked us up about 10 min later around 10:30 am and spent all day as our personal driver. He would drop us off and find a shady spot to wait until we were finished and then on to the next. After our last stop he dropped us back off at our hotel around 6:30 pm. It was quite a busy day. It was totally worth the $50 to have a car with Air conditioning because the alternative method was to spend the day on the dust roads in a Tuk Tuk.
Our first stop was The Killing Fields. Cambodia had a history of genocide in the 70’s. It’s all very depressing. We choose not to spend a lot of time on that history because it is depressing, but we did choose to go to he killing fields and it was eye opening. It was an audio tour and listening to the guide describe how people would be driven in truck loads to these fields, blindfolded, lined up and shot was just so crazy.
There were so many sad things during the tour. The structure below that looks like a hut was a huge excavated grave where hundreds of people were tossed. The tree in the bottom left was where they would throw kids against it before tossing them in graves. There were lots of skeletal remains that had washed up from the graves over time when it rained along with clothes of the victims. There was also a museum at the fields, in the description it said it had some of the tools used and I immediately crossed that off of our tour plans. It was hard to imagine that all of this happened in this area that at the same time was so beautiful.
After finishing up at the fields we headed to see some ancient temples. The first one was
Ta Prohm at Tonle Bati. This temple was near the main river about an hour outside the city. It was very pretty but the beauty was lost in the tons of children roaming around. The children wouldn’t have made a difference except they bombarded us as soon as we got out of the car. The followed us the entire time begging for money. It was very annoying and no matter how many times we told them no they would not leave us alone. It made this a quicker stop then we would have liked because we just couldn’t deal with all the children
Next up our driver took us along the river to see the shops and market. The we headed to our last stop of the day. This was a temple called
Phnom Chisor. This one was different from the others. It was on the top of a small mountain in the country side. We had to walk up about 400 steps to get to it. We seemed to be the only tourists visiting at the time we went. Every so often we would pass locals who were on their way down and they would each stop, look at us and say “Bless you” and some other stuff we couldn’t understand. A few times they would laugh a little. Matt said he thought they were laughing at us for wanting to make the trek up the mountain.
I know it does’t look very steep in those pictures, but trust me it was. Those building were all along the steps to give you somewhere to rest if that’s any indication. Once we made it to the top there was actually more than just the temple we came to see. There was two newer temples, one with a huge reclining Buddha, as well as a large building that appeared to be a home for monks. We solely based that on the fact that we saw numerous monks all around the temples. Let me tell you though it was worth the long journey to the top, the views of the country side from the top of this small mountain were beautiful. We also found a few wild monkeys and a couple snakes roaming around up there.
Once we returned from our all day adventure it was time to get ready for dinner. We made a reservation at a restaurant called,
Friends. The description said it was a training restaurant. They take in troubled kids and train them so they have skills to get off the streets. It was definitely a tourist restaurant and was a bit expensive compared to prices at other local restaurants. We usually try to eat local when we travel and would have loved to eat at one of the local places, but in a country where you can’t drink the water and a lot of places looked more like condemned buildings, we just decided it was best to be safe.
The most notable thing I found in the reviews was that they serve deep fried tarantulas! YES, Deep fried spiders!! They looked exactly like a full tarantula when served on your plate, just covered in breading. Pretty sure they just dip them and fry then and send them to your table. Don’t worry we did not order them. A bunch of tables around us that appeared to be groups of college kids did order them while we were there. We watched one of the guys chomp down on one (after he made sure to take a picture with the fried spider), and after taking in the full bite he made a nod as to say it wasn’t that bad. Yep, still not ever eating a spider!!
Matt did feel the need to try something “daring,” so he ordered the stir fried beef and red tree ants. When it arrived at the table the ants are not hidden in the meal, no blending them in the sauce, Nope, fully intact ants mixed into a pile of meat and peppers. I only tried one bite (that’s me trying the ants in the bottom row below) and I thought it tasted like soap. Matt thought it wasn’t “that bad,” and ate half the plate.We also ordered stuffed pumpkin flowers, and sweet potato/taro fries. For dessert we got chocolate cake and rum compote (more like a shot of straight rum), and a banana-cashew shake. Everything was delicious (minus the ants).
We finished dinner and headed right back to our hotel to rest up for our last day in Cambodia. We were headed to tour a
wildlife rescue. I was looking forward to the behide the scenes tour the most. It was definitely the highlight of our time in Cambodia.
Can’t wait to share it with you!
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