Mall of Nia: April 2013 Siem Reap trip : KL

Our plane is quite early, it leaves at 06:50, so we have to be at the airport at least at 05:00. We were picked up by my sister-in-law's usual taxi she uses, to go to LCCT airport at 03:45, my eyes were just too hard to cooperate to open at those hours :'(

We had breakfast from the dinner we bought last night at midvalley, the delicious Bee Cheng Hiang with rice from KFC (oh btw rice in KFC in KL tasted like rice for chicken rice not just the ordinary white rice), which works really well that morning to fill our tummy and drank the water bottle we bought last night as well which cost half from the water bottle at airport :)

After almost a 2 hours ride, we landed safely in Siem Reap, the airport was small but very clean and beautiful, there is no time difference between Siem Reap and Jakarta. Prior to our travel we tried to look for visa information, Indonesian are not suppose to pay for VOA which cost USD 25 per person, since our countries has a free 30 days visa agreement. At the immigration there were no meaningful event for me just that the officer took quite some time to chop on my passport and he didn't ask for my visa, but for my hubby the same immigration officer was saying "chip" repeatedly (which he can't understand), finally with his eyes gesture showing money on his desk, then my hubby understood what the officer was asking for "tip" but at the time I was bringing his wallet, so he told the officer that I had all the money with me and luckily I was already walking further from him to get our luggage :)

We also had checked which SIM card to buy when we arrive in Siem Reap, we wanted Hello since this would be the cheapest to phone back home. Thankfully after the custom check (since we have nothing to declare we only gave the paper form to the custom officer), there were SIM card sales booths and one of them is from Hello-Smart, it cost USD 1 for the SIM card and we bought USD 5 for the credit, this is sufficient to make long distance call for us. It cost USD 0.07 for a 1 minute call to Jakarta. I found it a bit weird to find out that even the credit for phones are using USD as their base and not using the local currency.

Since we made our prior checking as well, we found out that mostly USD notes are used instead of the local currency (Riel).

So I made sure to exchange our money in USD but in small bank notes such as USD 1 - 20 even though it's a bit hard to exchange but thankfully the money changer where I used to exchange money has this. And this turns out to be a wise decision, since we had no payments done in the local currency, all are done in USD. Local currency are only used by the locals to give exchange for cents in USD. At the time of our visit the exchange rate is around USD 1 = Riel 4,000.

Hotel's poolside terrace

As the hotel we picked has airport pick up transport arrangement, we have no trouble for asking our pick up. We chose Borei Angkor Resort and Spa as our accommodation in Siem Reap, and we have no regrets about it at all, the staffs were very welcoming and friendly. The assistant resident host manager remembers most of the guests name, which I find remarkable. They let us early check in and even upgraded our room which we really appreciate after the early flight we had, we really do need a little bit of rest.

Khmer Kitchen

At around 11 AM we decided to do an early lunch, after asking for local food, Jasmine the assistant resident host manager, recommended Amok fish at Khmer Kitchen which turns out to be really good, we loved it. The hotel provided tuk-tuk for us to go to the restaurant which located near by the Old Market (Psaar Cha) though we have to pay for the service but the tuk-tuk is in a much better condition than the usual tuk-tuk in downtown, and the cost is the basic price.

Lok Lak beef - Amok fish - Spring Roll

We ordered Amok fish, Lok Lak beef and fresh Spring Roll. Most of the food here we can choose the kind of protein we wanted to use whether it is fish, beef, pork or tofu and the main dish comes with free flow of white rice, for the main course it cost around USD 4. As I told you before the Amok fish was really good (we even came back for more on our last night), the spring roll was ok, as for the Lok Lak beef the taste was good but the beef was a bit tough. As we were warned about water and ice here, we didn't want to risk our 1st day to be ruined by ice so instead of the hot weather we chose to drink hot lemon tea and hot lemongrass tea which both tasted good.

After finishing our lunch, hubby made a phone call to a guiding service which we read in tripadvisor and search from some list of guiding service we found. Thankfully he was free on our visiting day, so he was available to accompany us for today and our next trip, as we wanted our last day (3rd day) to just hang around downtown Siem Reap. Prior to our trip we sent an email to him for our trip and he responded quite quickly, but too bad my hubby's email can't be opened from Malaysia so we can't get in touch again by email and we didn't wrote down his email as well, just his phone number this is why we were luckily still able to contact him.