Advice for Angkor Wat

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My guesthouse had really good food, so I think that is your best bet. They had Asian food but also some foreign fvorites, like spaghetti, cheeseburgers and garlic bread. They also had a very tasty pumpkin soup. Everything was cheap, and you wrote down your tab so you didn't have to pay until the last day.

The museum is outdoors on a small, enclosed property. There is a hut sort of shelter that houses all sorts of land mine and bomb shells, each of which has had the explosives removed. Alongside the piles of ammunition are descriptions of how they functioned and their history and uses. There are also some big guns and rifles in another smaller shelter. There is a "garden" type display, roped off, which displays all the different types of mines as they would look on the ground as they were set. This is pretty interesting, but it is difficult to make out where each one is. Also, if you've been searching for that Cambodian police uniform, you'll find it here in the little gift area.

The really cool thing about the museum is the story about the guy who started it and still runs it. There is a pamphlet that describes his past at the museum. If I remember correctly, his parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge and they forced him to lay landmines. Then The Vietnamese captured him and forced him to do the same for them. Now he has dedicated his life to getting rid of landmines.

From Phnom Penh take the riverboat up the river to Siem Reap. This is safe, and you can even sit on the roof and watch the scenery, and it only got rough when we reached Cambodia's huge lake, Tonle Sap. The guesthouse manager in Phnom Penh will tell you how to get there. Many of the guesthouses in one city have an affiliation with the guesthouse in the other city. In Phnom Penh I stayed at Narrin Guesthouse, and Narrin himself recommended Smiley Guesthouse, owned by his cousin or something. So as we were getting off the boat at Siem Reap, I just looked for a sign that said Smiley Guesthouse on the shore because they had called ahead and arranged transportation.

Leaving Siem Reap was a different story. I went back to Thailand because I was heading to Laos next. I didn't want to go overland the whole way because of what I had heqard about the horrendous ride, so I took another boat to Battambang, almost halfway, and got in a truck there. The trucks don't have suspension systems really, and the roads are horrible, cratered and bumpy. Plus you are either crammed into the cab or the back of the truck. Expect traffic jams from trucks getting stuck in the mud and pray that it isn't your own, because if it is, you're gonna be pushing. So I finally got to Poipet, just in time to cross the border before it closed. Try to do this as well, although you won't need my encouragement when you see what it is like there. Not a very nice place, especially when Thailand is a short walk away.