Beautiful Siem Reap

The best way to travel with three young children is to find a place only one hour away and small enough to visit in three days.  For us, this was Siem Reap, Cambodia.  We left at 5 a.m. on Friday morning from the house, arrived at 8 a.m. to the hotel in Siem Reap, and left the hotel on Sunday night at 7 p.m. to arrive home at 11 p.m. By the end of it, the kids were exhausted but still so very well behaved.  In these few days we got to enjoy the pool at the hotel and to tour quite a bit of the area and see so much culture and history.

Siem Reap is beautiful because its people are so nice and because its temples are so rich in history and culture.  We saw farm areas where homes only have one light bulb at night. We saw children biking home from school on bikes much larger than bikes they should be riding on with young children peddling younger children home.  We saw bicycles and scooters and tuk tuks but very little cars. We did not see any high buildings because no structure can be higher than Angkor Wat temple. We saw a lot of charitable organizations raising money for children of Cambodia.  We saw a beautiful sunset and a gorgeous sunrise.  We saw so much and we felt so happy being there.

Our villa - the architecture of the hotel is Khmer architecture

Our address

We were greeted with scarves and orange juice

The boys are now used to taking pictures of the towel decor

We swam so much during our stay.  We were so excited about how warm the pool was. Our pool in Bangkok is always cold.

Our first day we spent the day swimming and having lunch by the pool.  Our lunch was delicious and we tried Khmer food for the first time.  I would say it is very much like Thai food, but not spicy.  Then our driver KC picked us up so we can go see the sunset from a temple.

On our way to see the sunset with our Tuk Tuk driver KC who drove us around the entire time

Children biking back from school

Children leaving school

Villages on our way to the temple

Rice field.  It was my first time seeing one...very exciting!

Arriving to the temple

Starting the trek up

And it was quite the trek.  The boys did so well and I carried M up.  I have to admit I was nervous.

It was very steep

But worth it

Thankfully we later found out there are stairs with a railing (still not the best because of the gaps in between but better than the other option for the way down)

One of my favourites

They got a bit tired of waiting for the sunset

And really tired....

Tired enough to be silly

Tired enough to be annoyed of more photos

Ditto

But it was time for the sunset.  Mike the tourist with his camera, backpack and hat ready to take some shots

And so was my mom

Awww

Although the boys were very tired of waiting for the sunset (remember we woke them up early that day for the flight and they swam all day) they started to understand that the Earth turns and while we no longer had sun, Canada was getting sun.  That was interesting to them.

The next day we woke up very early again and it was time now to see the sunrise and so KC picked us up and we headed to Angkor Wat for that.  It was nice and peaceful to be up so early.

Waiting patiently

And so was he

And so was she...

It really was stunning

The sun, the reflection...it was beautiful

On our way in with our tour guide

Love these kind of pics, he looks so comfy

Just beautiful

They were trying to jump for a cool picture

They were getting really tired and it was getting very hot

Some more touring and exploring

Cute baby interested by Cristiano

Some views of our hotel

Dinner at the hotel

They got some really good sun

Riding with KC at the night market

It rained at the night market - it really came down but only for a few minutes

We didn't do much shopping, because it was very similar to shopping in Bangkok markets.  So what do you do when you don't shop....foot massage!  Foot massage for all (well almost).  

Everywhere we go in Bangkok they ask us for "baby massage" and the same happened here and we finally said yes

Adriano LOVED IT!!!!

Michael also got a nice back rub...cute!

 On our last day we spent some time in the pool.  Then we toured the city and ate at a wonderful restaurant called Butterfly Gardens.  The garden is home to some beautiful Angkorean butterflies purchased from children in Siem Reap who caught them.  The restaurant is a charitable organization helping children of Cambodia. The butterflies were beautiful, and the Khmer food delicious.

So grown up

Looking for the butterflies

For those of you thinking of visiting us but also want to see another part of south East Asia, traveling to Siem Reap from Bangkok would be a wonderful idea.