January 7-12, 2026
Gordon and I went to Siem Reap in Cambodia.
The Google Maps above show the place. Gordon writes:
Richard has invited me to post about our journey in Cambodia.
When I landed in Siem Reap mid-morning—from Hobart to Sydney to Singapore—I’d only managed a couple of hours sleep. Richard had arrived the previous day, which was very handy for me.
Travel tips!
Always be met at the airport by someone who is conscious and well rested and who knows their way around. Preferably they should have cake.
Good to see Richard anyway, regardless of his utilitarian value.
He’d arranged a car from the airport—mad extravagance! I reached for my seatbelt and felt a nanosecond of stress, but the gendarmes at the airport are not concerned with seatbelts and six people on a scooter is legal as long as one of them has a firm hold on the piglet.
I checked into the hotel and caught a couple of hours sleep. By 3pm, I was feeling somewhat functional and coherent, so we decided to visit Angkor Wat—7 or 8 kilometres from the centre of Siem Reap.
We took a tuk-tuk. I like the music of that sentence, but actually it was a moto-remorque—a two-wheeled trailer pulled by a motorbike. Tuk-tuks are three-wheelers with an integrated cabin enclosing the driver and passengers. Further nuances of differentiation can be found in the Big Bumper Book of Vehicle Identification so there’s no point in me going on about them here.
First to Angkor Enterprise, to the northeast of the city centre, to get our tickets. One day is US$35; three, $62; and seven, $72. We took the middle way, because we are deeply spiritual like that.
Angkor means city, and wat is temple. To build it, you get enough stone to make a pyramid and arrange it into a quincunx ⁙ and bung on spires and sun-filled colonnades and similar architectural terminology and carve almost every exposed surface into episodes from the Hindu epics and 37 versions of heaven (but just 32 of hell) and bas reliefs of gods, demon kings and apsaras, etc.
The Hindu-ness of it all is because Cambodia was created from the union of an Indian prince and a princess of the Naga—snake—people.
Khmer script is a descendant of the Brahmi script used for Sanskrit with extra curliness added for writing on banana leaves—I kid you not. Sadly, banana leaves don’t last down the centuries, but they also used it to inscribe stuff all over the surfaces of Angkor, so that’s good.
It’s all about the water and engineering really. The wat is the fruiting body of a mycelium of canals and man-made lakes that take advantage of the unique natural hydrology of this place, including the amazing expandable Tonle Sap Lake and the wonderful reversing Tonle Sap River.
More travel tips!
Learn all the stuff about all the things before you get there by listening to podcasts as you fall asleep. As this tends to blur the line between reality and the wonderful world of dreams / brain farts, always travel with a polymath who actually knows the geomorphology and myth and religion and history to get the story straight.
This is the view from the top if you get all the photo editing knobs and turn them up to eleven. Note divine presence emanating from upper left
Angkor Wat
★★★★★
Five stars!
Wat a Wat!
Cambodia uses US dollars and Cambodian riels interchangeably. There are 4000 riels to the US dollar—that is, 144 Australian cents. A thousand riel is like an American quarter—or about 36c Australian. No one uses Australian money, though—I just added that in for needless confusion. It’s quite simple once you get used to it, like most things.
That night we went to pub street. It’s a street with pubs! You can drink, you can eat, you can have your feet nibbled on by itty bitty fishes in a tank for one dollar an hour. We didn’t, but we could have, which is pretty good! Five stars for everyone.
Pub street
★★★★★
Nibbles!
Pubs!
That first night we ate at the riverside night market and nearby street vendors.
You can get a fruit juice or smoothie for 3 to 4 thousand riel. A plate of veggies, protein and noodles or rice for 5 or 6. Stuff cooked on a stick—pork, beef, itty bitty sausages, mystery chicken—are 1 to 4 thousand. Sometimes there are frogs’ legs if you want them—also there even if you don’t. You can get pancakes with banana, chocolate, and condensed milk for 3 thousand—5 thousand if you add all the things: cheese, egg, Nutella.
Market and street Food
★★★★★
Stuffed for 20 thousand riel!
The Sovann bakery and coffee shop on the night market street is a great place for breakfast. Local-friendly prices. Croissants or a mighty slab of banana bread or a muffin for two to four thousand. Coffee somewhere around whatever goes with that. Simple, elegant, friendly vibe.
General Vibe
★★★★★
Wandering Richard 