Our hostel provided clean and comfortable air-conditioned rooms, a pool with a swim-up bar, and plenty of space to relax with a snack. First things first: we found a great café around the corner run by a woman and her mother. The man seating customers, an enthusiastic older gentleman with a thick British accent, explained that the ladies running the place had lost many important members of their family to the Khmer Rouge regime. He kept reminding us that the food was simple, nothing fancy — but despite his modesty we were far from disappointed. I enjoyed a hot bowl of delicious curry and watched the line of hungry customers continue to grow outside the tiny restaurant.
The next full day in Siem Reap was spent exploring the temples inside Angkor Archaeological Park. We chose to rent mountain bikes from our hostel and head out late in the morning toward the entrance of the park. It certainly turned out to be an adventure — about a mile from our hostel, we ran into heavy traffic through the very center of town, nervously making our way into any space we could find in the insane convergence of motorbikes, tuk-tuks, and vehicles of all sizes. Although partly cloudy, the day was hot and unbearably humid, and I hung on to my bicycle for dear life with sweaty palms, drops of perspiration occasionally dripping into my eyes beneath my sunglasses. Miraculously, we made it out of Siem Reap all in one piece, despite one incident where I hit the front brakes on my bike too hard to avoid running into a vehicle in front of me and fell facedown onto a busy street. I was pretty shaken and breathless by the time we made it to the park's gate to purchase tickets, but we continued on another few miles to the main temple complex, where my breath was taken away again by the sheer size of Angkor Wat. Steady streams of tourists moved through its maze, snapping postcard-quality photos at every turn.
We continued our ride down paved and dirt roads through the park, visiting ruins of temples even older than the iconic Angkor Wat. I could feel myself getting more and more drained, even though all of us were sipping large amounts of water throughout the day; by the fourth or fifth temple and close to 13 miles in, I started to feel ill and reluctantly decided to call it a day. I was sweating from every pore, clothes soaked through, and utterly exhausted. Luckily, we had ended up at an air-conditioned building to stop for lunch by the time I started to feel really poorly, with a strange sort of chilly feeling accompanied by nausea. I had heard about heat exhaustion before, and I wasn't going to risk feeling worse. I asked the wait staff if anyone could call a tuk-tuk to return to town, as it seemed like a main stop inside the park and lots of cars were coming and going. Soon, a friendly tuk-tuk driver appeared and cleverly balanced my bike near my seat before buzzing back to town and our hostel. After returning to the air-conditioned room, drinking lots of water, and a lengthy nap, I felt much better. The rest of my travel companions returned just as exhausted, sweaty, and ready for cold showers, after riding over twenty miles in the unrelenting heat. Nothing some rest and a cold drink couldn't fix!
We left Siem Reap the next day, full of our adventure, feeling we had really experienced a slice of Cambodia and true Southeast Asia.
