Today we spent six hours on a bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap.

Yeah, it was pretty much that exciting of a day. This will be a bit of a shorter blog entry. But hey, not every day when you travel can be jam-packed with amazing sights and stories.

Early start this morning, as we had to have breakfast, pack up, and check out by 7am to get to the post office for our 7:30 minivan bus. Yep, you heard me right, the post office. Cambodia's transportation network has a system of long-distance vans run by a number of different companies, one of which happens to be the postal service. They transport passengers as well as mail, picking up and dropping off packages en route.

The van trip was comfortable-ish, if long. There aren't really proper highways in Cambodia, just two-lane roads where you feel like your life is being taken in your hands every time the driver decides to pass a truck in the oncoming lane. It was a lot of stop-start, as the driver would speed up after overtaking some slow traffic, only to slow right back down again at the next bit. I had the good sense to take a gravol before boarding the bus, and luckily mostly dozed through the six-hour ride.

We arrived in Siem Reap at around 1:30pm and were picked up by a tuk-tuk driver sent by our hotel. The place we're staying here is just lovely; our room is more like a two-room suite with a separate kitchen and living area, and it even has a private jacuzzi hot tub on the balcony. Swanky.

Siem Reap is one of those cities that is mostly built around a single industry: Tourism. Namely, Angkor Wat tourism. People come here to see the famous temples, and the whole city of Siem Reap seems set up for backpackers and travellers. Angkor Wat is Cambodia's biggest tourism draw. In 2019, the last year before the pandemic, 2.2 million people would visit annually, generating close to $100 million in revenue. Siem Reap was decimated by the pandemic; there isn't much here other than tourism, so the shutdowns of the sights, bars and restaurants hit locals hard. But it's starting to come back to life. The 225,000 tourists who visited between January and November of 2022 marked an increase of over 1000% vs 2021, though the numbers are still down over 75% versus 2019. For us, this is probably a good thing: It'll be a chance to see Angkor Wat without the crowds that threatened to ruin the sites. Though for locals in the service and tourism industry, there's still a long way to go.

We were conveniently able to arrange a tuk-tuk driver to take us to the temples tomorrow at the front desk of our hotel; all the drivers in Siem Reap do the same routes for basically the same prices, making it super easy for people to just book when they get here.

After that, we hailed a tuk-tuk on Grab and headed into town to run a few errands. First off, a stop at a pharmacy to get some cortisone cream for the mosquito bites I got in Phnom Penh that seem to have swelled up to the size of golf balls. Holy itchiness, Batman! We saw very few mosquitoes in Northern Thailand or Laos, but the critters are rampant here in Cambodia, so we'll have to be more diligent about the bugspray.

Then, into town to find some snacks, water, and dinner. We walked around a bit, getting the lay of the land. Siem Reap is built along the small Siem Reap River, which is a tiny stream in comparison to the mighty Mekong. There are charming covered bridges everywhere, a night market, a lot of very western restaurants and bars (Pub Street reminds me of Peel or Crescent during Frosh week), and just about everyone here speaks English. It's a town, but feels a little artificial, especially compared to Phnom Penh. Still, that's okay; we're here for the same reason as everyone else, and having conveniences at our doorstep isn't a bad thing.

With the long day on the bus, the heat and humidity, and the fact that neither of us had slept well the night before, we weren't really feeling up to much. We have to be up super early again tomorrow. So we bought some bananas from a mini-market, some bottled water, and stopped into a Cambodian and Thai open-air restaurant for a light dinner before hailing a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. It's the kind of night where we're likely going to be asleep by 8pm. Living the dream, folks.

So yeah, not much excitement today. But stay tuned for tomorrow's entry; it should more than make up for it.