Siem Reap, Cambodia

See more photos here

I arrived at the Siem Reap airport around 1 a.m. I was picked up at the airport by the brother of a person I met through Couchsurfing.com.  He had a sign with my name on it. He introduced himself as “Steve, Steve Jobs.” He teased he wanted to change his name to “Steve Jobs” because he wants to be rich. His real name is Viboll.  If you need a good tuk-tuk driver you can contact him on his FaceBook page here or here.  I called him “Steve” the whole trip. He helped me with my luggage and walked me to his tuk-tuk “Nasa 03” (photo).  We negotiated terms and set a price for him to drive me around to all the Angkor Archaeological Park sites. Since I wanted to go to the far temples, he said he would charge me $70 for 3 days including airport pick up and drop off.  His English is pretty good.

The Couchsurfer who was supposed to let me stay at his house wimped out and went to bed.  Steve took me to the Blossoming Romduol Hotel (photo) where I had booked a private room for the next night. I was able a get dorm room for the night, it was about ½ the price of a private. I think it was $6-8 for the dorm and it was $15 for a private with a bathroom en suite

When I got to the room, I tried to be quiet and keep the lights low while I got settled in.  The hotel provided me a nice big locker for my bags, that was nice.  There were 3-4 other people in the room though it had many more beds. The other guests were all sleeping since it was around 2 a.m.   In the effort to not wake them I didn’t even turn on my electric toothbrush.

The bed I chose didn’t have a top sheet on it only a towel, I ended up sleeping under the towel as the air conditioning worked well.  When I woke up I saw all the other beds had top sheets so I suffered because of my poor choice. Right after I woke up, around 5 a.m., I met one of the other guests at the hostel named Maria. I ended up hanging out with her and going to get a massage.  The massage was horrible!  It hurt. I wish I had gotten the name of the place so I could warn you which one not to go to!