We took a two day bus journey to get to Siem Reap. First a bus ride from Sihanoukville to Phnom Pen, and then a night bus from Phnom Pen, to Siem Reap. When we arrived at arrived in Siem Reap, we stayed at Blossoming Romdoul Lodge which was great as it included breakfast, use of the swimming pool, fish spa, bicycles and pool table. All of this for the equivalent of about R130 per night!
The reason anyone comes to Siem Reap is to visit Angkor Wat, which is the largest religious monument in the world. We spent 3 days exploring the Angkor Archaeological Park. The first day we experienced the tuk tuk tour by waking up at 4am to see the sun rising over Angkor Wat. The remaining days we decided to cycle to and around the park, which is massive and quite a challenge in the extreme heat and humidity, but it was so much fun. The Bayon temple with it’s many faces and Ta Prohm, the temple totally being taken over by the tree roots, which appears in the movie ‘tomb raider’ were our absolute favorites.
We definitely recommend taking at least a 3 day entry pass to fully appreciate all the temples. There are so many and some of them are quite far from each other. If you only have one day, you will most likely not see the best of what is available. Exploring by bicycle as we did on the 2nd and 3rd day was great as it allowed us to explore at our own pace and was really fun riding the bikes from temple to temple, through the beautiful countryside.