Before planning our trip to Cambodia, I was a little nervous about what our experience was going to be.  Almost every blog post I read painted the country in a ‘not so pretty’ picture.  Our schedule only allowed us to be in the country for a week, but seven days can seem like forever if you’re not enjoying your time.  Our Cambodia stop was about half way through our South East Asia adventure, so we decided to plan a relaxing time to rejuvenate for the rest of our travels.  Cambodia turned out to be the perfect place to slow down a little and our experience was unlike all the negative posts I had read before arriving.  We could have easily jammed in a lot more to our seven days, but we decided to only visit two areas, Kong Rong Island and Siem Reap.  These two places were a perfect way to see some popular attractions in Cambodia, as well as relax and get to know the culture surrounding us.

Koh Rong Island

Both Iden and I love being beach bums, so it was a natural choice for us to spend a few days on a Cambodia Island.  The islands are a little less developed in Cambodia, therefore, we decided to go with Koh Rong because it is the largest island with a few more resorts to choose from.  There is a huge price difference when choosing a place to stay, but there is also a huge quality difference as well.  There is one resort that costs around $500 US a night (this is completely out of our price range!) so we went with the next one on the list which was around $100 US night for a suite.  This was still more than we wanted to spend, but I am really glad we did, because when we went by some of the less expensive places, they looked pretty rough.  

Sok San Resort (not to be confused with Sok San Bungalows) was a cute little place right along the edge of the island.  The accommodations are small bungalows, nothing fancy, with running water, power and a/c.  The food at the resort was delicious and the beach and water was absolutely stunning!  The white sand flows into the warm jade water, which is crystal clear and perfect for lounging around in all day.  Unfortunately this beautiful beach comes with some nasty sand flies.  The good news was that I brought along a natural bug repellent, and this seemed to keep them at bay.  The island is occupied by only four villages, so it’s a great place to escape life and chill!  Fun fact - Survivor filmed the 31 and 32 season on this island!

If you’re traveling to a Cambodian island I do want to warn you about the transportation.  You can only reach the island by boat, and we unfortunately had a terrifying experience on our journey to the island.  We decided to use the resorts “high speed boat” to take us directly to the island which takes about 45 minutes to an hour,  However, it was rainy and windy on the day of our arrival which made this a very rough ride.  The boat holds about 20 passengers, with 3 crew members.  They have you wear life jackets (this freaked me out) and inform you about the vomit bags before you leave!  The waves were huge and crashed over the front of the boat.  We caught air a few times, and I was sure we were going to be capsized!  This journey completely scared the sh*t out of me!!!  We did make it safely to the island, although I was sure I was going to have to swim to shore at some point!  I am happy to report that when we left the island, it was a beautiful day and the boat ride was quite enjoyable!  There is a public ferry, which I believe is a larger boat, so this might make you feel more comfortable when traveling to a Cambodian island.

Siem Reap

One of the largest tourist attractions in Cambodia is the temples of Angkor Wat.  This wonder of the world has definitely been on my list to see, and it did not disappoint.  We don’t always hire a tour guide when visiting different attractions, but I highly recommend getting one when going to the temples.  If you’re not a huge enthusiast, you can enjoy the one-day pass and experience three of the main areas in this huge complex.  The great thing about having a guide with a tuk-tuk driver is you can get from one spot to the next quickly, and your guide can customize your experience to make sure that you don’t waist your time looking for the best parts of the temples.  

Our guide was great!  We got up bright and early in the morning to get our temple tickets and head to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise over the temple.  For me, it was a breathtaking moment!  The weather is hot in Cambodia, however, there are a lot of areas to get shade around the temples.  I wore a hat to keep the sun off my head, but it didn’t end up being necessary.  We also made sure we dressed appropriately for visiting a temple (shoulders and knees covered).  Although many people did not follow this, I’m glad we did because it was a Buddhist holiday when we were there.  We would not have been able to enter some areas without having the appropriate dress.  It was a hot day but we finished exploring the three temples by noon, and we were able to cool off in the pool at our hotel in the afternoon.

It seems that most people only visit the temples in Siem Reap and then do day trips to some of the other attractions in the surrounding areas.  We wanted to see more of the culture around us, but the locals couldn’t give us any suggestions.  We stumbled across a yoga studio online, so we decided to take in a class.  To our surprise the studio was owned by a fellow Canadian!  It was great meeting her, as she was able to tell us some of the interesting things to do around the city.

The next day we followed a few of her suggestions and visited a local Silk Farm.  The tour and transportation was free so we figured we couldn’t loose!  It was super interesting to go to the farm and learn about how silk is made.  If you have extra time, I totally suggest checking it out!  We also hit up the Cambodian Circus!  Cambodia has created many opportunities for less fortunate people to get education or build careers, and the Silk Farm and Circus are two of them.  Although I wouldn’t say the performance and the circus was amazing, you could tell the people were having a great time!  

Visiting Cambodia was much more enjoyable than I thought it was going to be.  With the recent war history, the country is still in the recovery stages, but I feel like they are working hard to make it an enjoyable place for tourists.  Do be prepared to be surrounded by a lot of garbage in the streets, especially in the Sihanouk area.  The Siem Reap area seems to be doing more about trash clean up, probably because they have more tourists.  I had a hard time seeing so much trash floating in the ocean and being dumped in the streets.  Also, along with the trash comes a huge amount of flies.  Talking with some of the locals around our age, it really did bring to light how close the tragedy of the war still is.  They remember seeing dead bodies in the road and many of the family members were killed.  

Although the country may not be perfect, they are trying hard to rebuild.  It will take a few generations to have the strength to stand up for what they believe in.  I encourage you to visit countries like this to help support those people. Although we didn’t have the opportunity to see all of the areas, the small footprint we did touch was beautiful!