Last February (2011) I had a free time after finishing my thesis and in between job. Lucky for me, one of my friend wanted to spent her remaining annual leave quota so we planned a trip to Siem Reap. I heard a lot about the beauty of this place, the temples and everything and wanted to see it. We wanted to buy airline ticket directly to Siem Reap (REP) , or from KL to REP but by that time the ticket was very expensive. The promo ticket was from JKT to Bangkok (BKK) via Singapore (SGP) using Jetstar. Very cheap ticket, only USD 25. Actually it is not a comfortable schedule because we leave Jakarta for Singapore at night and leave Singapore for Bangkok the next morning, so we have to spend one night in Singapore. Luckily for us we have a friend who lives in Singapore and have extra room, so we can stay at their place. The next morning we leave Singapore and headed to Bangkok.
Bangkok
We arrive in Bangkok in the morning and go straight to our hostel. We have booked a hostel in downtown Bangkok, YHA hostel. Bangkok is nice, the food is definitely great, just around every corner we can find good food. On the first day ini Bangkok we decided to just explore the area around our hostel and go to Hualamphong train station to see the train schedule for our overland to Siem Reap and explore the nearby sightseeing in Hualamphong, try every interesting food we found and ended the day in MBK and Siam Paragon the most famous mall in Bangkok.The next day in Bangkok we start our day with breakfast hunting in the local market just nearby our hostel. Thailand is famous for its fruit and traditional cookies (kueh) so we try that. Fruits are everywhere with 20 bath we can get a small plastic bag of any kind of local (tropical) fruit.
After breakfast we went to the famous Chao Praya river where mostly tourist attraction located. So we looked for the nearest MRT station and go to Saphan Taksin station. That station is walking distance to the port where we can find water taxi to bring us along Chao Praya river to see Wat Arun, Grand Palace and the Reclining Buddha and see sunset at Wat Arun after that straight to our hotel to get some rest for Siem Reap.Siem Reap
Thailand and Combodia have been in dispute for a long time, this time they have quarrel about a temple (Preah Kahn) in the border area so we always confirm to Indonesian embassy in Pnom Penh to make sure that the route we were taking is safe. They confirmed that the hot zone is very far from the route were taking so it was okay.
It was a one day trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap. We started 7am from our hostel in Bangkok using BTS (MRT) to Mo Chit station, from the station we took government bus for 6.5 bath to Chatuchak Bus Station (we decided to take the bus instead of train from hualamphong). From chatuchak we took 4 hours bus to Arannyaprathet, from there we took tuk-tuk to Poipet (cambodian border) and after stamp for Visa (20USD) we order a taxi for another 3 hours trip to Siem Reap and finally at dinner time we arrived at our hostel in Siem Reap. :)
Wat Angkor Archeological Park
Siem Reap city is very vibrant with the tourism for Wat Angkor as the main attracttion. Tourist from all over the world come to see this old city of angkor, especially after the movie Tomb Rider starred by Angeline Jolie took place in these temples. Angkor is the old capital city of Cambodia before Pnom Penh. The whole city was build temple over temple with a very good details of carvings. We went for two days exploring wat angkor before we leave for Kuala Lumpur.
