on the morning of our second day, we walked quite a long way to find breakfast (lost). luckily we finally found a place and the food and the price were okay. done with breakfast, we went to visit the angkor national museum. the museum is located very near to our hotel.it was only 10 minutes walk. we were among the first visitors. the entrance fee is USD12. believe it or not, we spent almost four hours here. maybe you'll read some testimonials, saying that the entrance fee is quite expensive and it wasn't worth it. but for miss a and me, we love museums because we learned a lot of new things there! unfortunately, cameras are forbidden and we only could sneak a few photos. for those of u who love museum, this visit is a must but if u are not a fan of it, you could leave if out from your visit.
our next activity was to buy entrance tickets for phare, the cambodian circus. the tickets cost USD15/pax. we stumbled upon this circus while surveying attractions/activities in tripadvisor. actually, most of the things we did were from a research done in tripadvisor, tripadvisor rules!!! showtime was on 7.30pm. this circus is located behind the angkor national museum. we walked back (we really walked a lot) to the hotel and waited for the arrival of our 2pm transportation, a tuk-tuk to angkor silk farm. while waiting, we ate a little to sustain our stomach until our late lunch, after the silk farm visit.
the ride to the silk farm took about 25 minutes from our hotel. upon arriving, we were greeted by a friendly guide that took us around the silk farm. this was my first visit to a silk farm/factory and i'm really amazed by the process. the silkworms only ate mulberry leaves. if a different types of leaves given, then they wouldn't produce the quality silks required. we were showed the room where the worms were fed and then became pupa, the cocoon unwinding, preparation of the silk threads, ikat technique (tie-dyeing of the threads) and silk weaving. they showed us the traditional and also the modern methods.
we spent about one hour here and we went back to the old market to have our lunch and done some last minute shopping. we asked our tuk-tuk driver to wait for us for a couple of hours. we had our first real meal at taj mahal restaurant. there are a lot of 'halal' restaurants here in the old market. the portion of the foods are a lot! u order one plate and two persons could it. we didn't know about that and we had to 'tapau' the leftover. after the late lunch, we went back to our hotel to get ready for the circus performance.
while we were prepping ourselves for the circus, suddenly the lights went out. at first,i thought it was only our room since we were using extensions to charge our phones, tablet, powerbank etc,but it turned out the whole city was in darkness. when we asked our hotel manager and he said that it was normal. we were a little afraid that the circus would be cancel due to the blackout but fortunately it wasn't. we had the time of our life at the circus and i would highly recommended for u to watch this performance if u ever come to siem reap. by the time we got back to our hotel, the lights was already back and we packed our staffs for going back to malaysia the next day.
01/03/2014 (saturday)
we had a little miscommunication with sokpee regarding the ride to the airport. no transportation was provided so we had to wait for another mean of transportation to arrive. the hotel's staff managed to get us a tuk-tuk and we arrived at the airport on time. we really had a spectacular time here in siem reap and we hope that you'll one as well if u get the chance to come here one day.
