Reaching Siem Reap
5.45pm
it was almost 6pm when we reached siem reap international airport. the customs guys are definitely not one of the friendliest people around town. after grabbing your passport, grumbling in a weird tone, scrutinizing your face again and again and signaling for you to face a weird looking round device (which you wouldn't notice is a camera attached to the table without staring at it for some time), we were given the pass for the luggage belt. The customs guys will be the only more unfriendly people you will meet on this trip, and i'm quite sure they are still there grumbling to other foreign visitors as of writing this, which they will be doing for a very long time i presume. by the time we had our luggage and were at the arrival gates, our driver from red piano guesthouse was already waiting for us.
drive to guesthouse
7pm
it was a 30minutes drive from the airport to the guesthouse. the sky was already pretty dark and we were expecting a taxi but turns out it was a black car of some sort with tinted glass that fetched us. i felt as if i was the president of some country for a moment. along the road we learnt from the driver how to pronounce "psar chaar" (old market) and got ourselves familiar with some of the eateries and night markets to visit at night. we were considering whether to take the car or a remorque-motor for the subsequent days and the driver was quite pushy that we take a car, saying it's safer and easier. we were initially quite taken with the car but decided to take it for 2 days and a remorque motor for the other days, seeing that we wouldn't have much to spend on souveniers if we splurge it all on the car. by the time we reached our guesthouse and negotiated to be driven by the driver's brother, who was a remorque-motor driver, it was already 8pm. checking into the guesthouse, we got out a few minutes later to visit the Night market.
night market and blue pumpkin
8.30pm
it was a 5mins walk from the guesthouse to the night market. it was a little too clean for us though..hah.. we were expecting some place a little more rundown and more suitable for price haggling. items there weren't really that cheap and bargainning was significant harder as compared to the other markets that we visited later on, but it being our first stop, we kinda wowed at everything..haha.. i was pretty taken aback and surprised though when some of the stallholders started greeting us in chinese. after the trip, i realise that almost 2/3 of the residents there have taken to learning simple phrases from a variety of languages for business purposes. after window shopping for a while we decided to eat at the blue pumpkin. everything good that everyone said about the cafe is true!
