Pretty impressed with the food so far!

First on the agenda was to find some breakfast. We're quickly learning that Siem Reap has a big variety of quality restaurants at decent prices. Gluten free, vegetarian, Italian, Indian... whatever you want. As well as the more local and cheaper Cambodian street food stalls. While we enjoyed Malaysia, our first impression of Cambodia is that we are going to like the food more.

So, we found a place that advertised "all day breakfast". Our plan was to go for a filling late breakfast, then skip lunch, and have a somewhat early dinner. 

We both decided on poached eggs with spinach and mushrooms. Then we split a big fruit bowl with muesli and yogurt, and a fruit smoothie.

Our watermelon, strawberry and dragon fruit smoothie was delicious!

Poached eggs with fruit bowl, muesli and yogurt.

Total bill was $12.25 USD for the two of us. It's a bit pricey by local standards, and of course the $CAD sucks compared to the $USD, so for us Canadians it cost $16.50 CAD. Still reasonable by Canadian standards where the same breakfast would cost at least double that. 

Breakfast menu, priced in both $USD and KHR (Cambodian Riel).

Then we set off exploring. The temperature here cools off to around 21C (70F) overnight, so mornings are comfortable. But by 2-3pm, it peaks at 34C (93F), so the plan is to explore in the morning, and be back in the air conditioned room for a mid afternoon nap during the heat of the day.

This cactus type plant had beautiful flowers.

We walked by a temple that looked a little different...

It was all to do with some monk who traveled by boat.

We walked along the paths by the Siem Reap River.

Lizard.

Eggs for sale.

Not sure what happened to the egg seller!

Pretty flower!

We walked on some of the back roads in the real local neighborhood where none of the tourists go. People are really friendly. Many of them said hello. Lots of trash lying around. We noticed the trash on the drive in from the airport as well. Oh, and a lot of tuk tuk drivers as well. They all see a foreigner walking, and they assume you must need a tuk-tuk, so we are constantly telling them "no thanks".

On the side streets.

We walked through a local market.

The banana guy!

It wasn't busy. This lady was having a snooze.

That's some nice looking broccoli!

Bridge near the Royal Palace.

Royal Palace Gardens are free on Sundays.

Popular local temple at the Royal Palace Gardens.

Ruth, at the Royal Palace Gardens.

Statue square at Royal Palace Gardens.

Some good statues.

We took a different route back to our room, and along the way we passed the fancy Park Hyatt Hotel, probably the most expensive hotel in Siem Reap. When I had been looking at our options, I had seen the price listed at $504 USD per night!  

I was really curious what you get for that money, so we went in to have a look. Talking to reception, They started off at the price, but I quickly got them down to $300 USD a night for a five night stay. They showed us a room, and yes... it's pretty darn nice. But really hard to justify the price difference compared to what we've got for $20 a night! Of course you also get to make use of both the fresh water pool, and the salt water pool.

Nice room at the Park Hyatt Siem Reap.

So, we are not going to stay there, although it sure would be a nice splurge for a night! However... the girl showing us around said that we were welcome to join them for discounted cocktails at happy hour in their very nice bar. Probably one of the nicest bars I've ever seen! Then at 7:00pm, they put on an hour long show that is totally free. So we're going to take that in one evening. 

Back at the room for an afternoon nap, then we played a few rounds of backgammon. Oh, we had forgotten to tell you about last year's final totals. Regular readers know that we play a lot of backgammon (we carry around a travel board), yahtzee, and occasionally cribbage. And we keep track of our annual scores in all three.

For 2023, our backgammon tally was 418 wins for me, and 332 wins for Ruth. Yahtzee was quite a bit closer, and right down to the wire! 194 for me, vs 190 for Ruth. That was close! And we didn't play much cribbage, but Ruth took that one with 20 wins vs my 17.

We had walked by an Indian restaurant and decided to go back to check it out for dinner. It had only opened in November, and the reviews to date were almost all five stars.

And we also gave it five stars!

The food was delicious. A  chicken curry, and a spinach and cheese curry. Really good. And we each had a glass of wine. Total bill was $13.60 USD ($18.30 CAD).

Then we wandered down to the tourist area that is full of pubs and restaurants and massage places.

We wouldn't eat or drink here, but it was fun wandering around.

Lady getting a fish massage.

This guy comes running up to me wanting me to spend $3 on the fish massage. And you get a free beer with that! Lol... no thanks.

So... we've had four meals here in Siem Reap and they've all been fantastic. Pretty impressed with the food so far, however we are spending more money than what we would pay for local food at street stalls. However we will try that out as well. 

Of course the reason for being in Siem Reap is not the city itself... it's the nearby archeological site of Angkor Wat. We've decided we're going to do a one day visit on Tuesday. It costs $37 USD each plus $17 USD for the tuk tuk to drive us around for the day. So a total of $91 USD ($122 CAD) for the day. We were on the fence about it, but my mother had given us some birthday/Christmas money that we try to spend on something we wouldn't normally do, so we've taken some of that money to pay for this excursion.

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