If Siem Reap is a favorite because of its amazing temples, a close second must be the night life on Pub Street and in the night market area. The city really comes alive at night. The contrast is so different it is almost strange. I was lucky as both the night market and Pub Street were about 500 m from One Stop Hostel, where I was staying.
First, a word about my hostel. It was a comfy, modern looking and reasonably priced. The stay would have been pretty good if it hadn't been for the two British teens who brought a guy back and had drunken sex all night in our 8 beds dorm. They were too drunk to be reasoned with it seemed and no one wanted to get the management involved. I managed to sleep through it, I wonder about the others though. Backpackers out there, that's a big no no. If you want sex, shed the extra money and get a private room for the night. You can even plan for it in advance if you know it will happen...
On Pub Street you can find Khmer and foreign restaurants. I walked along the street, but I never actually stopped to drink. Traveling solo, I rarely head in a bar alone. In the market area, you will find plenty of street food. Food is cheap in Cambodia. Still it goes without saying that street food is cheaper than restaurant food - you could get a meal on the street for about 3$.
I will admit having trouble finding the night market area. Which is somewhat silly considering how big it is and how close it was to my hostel. The market is where you can find almost everything you need, from all sorts of souvenirs to massages and other spa services. While, in an earlier post, I strongly recommended going to the Artisans of Angkor to purchase your souvenirs, the night market is the place to go if you absolutely must go the inexpensive way.
On another note, it seems the market is the place where you will see the most obnoxious tourists, made worst by alcohol. It is also were you will see the prostitutes. I have heard the sex trade it strong in Cambodia and I have no doubt it's true considering how many girls I saw working the streets. For girls, on the other hand, being hit on will most likely becomes an omnipresent and unavoidable reality at night. I'm not saying it won't happen during the day too.
As for shopping the market... Having to really control the weight I carry, I don't often buy things as it would just add to the packing nightmare I face every time. I still liked strolling around the market at night, because I do like people watching. There is something humbling about walking solo at night and watching the world go by - being truly alone in a sea of people. As you can imagine, in Cambodia and in other parts of South East Asia you don't get the same peace out of it, because as a foreigner you are never really anonymous.
Lastly, here like so many other places, you will also have to deal with people begging for money. It is sad, you would hope one never has to grow accustomed to the begging, but in South East Asia and Indonesia, I didn't have a choice. I had to learn not to let it get to me as much. This being said, begging in Cambodia is very heart-wrenching since those begging tend to be landmines victims and children.
Lists don't seem to agree exactly what positions Cambodia occupies on the dark record list of the most land-mined countries in the world. Yet, they all agree that Cambodia is right there around the top with a whooping 10 000 000 mines. You will hear stories about farmers stepping on mines in the fields and other horrifying account of landmine encounters. Most of these landmines date back to the time of the Khmer rouge. I will come back to this at a later point, since this gloomy topic isn't quite fitting for the actual subject of today's post.
One last note about night life here. The one thing I would have liked to witness up close above all would be the improvised discotheque near the highway, which I spied on the bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. It seems all it takes for locals to have some fun is to install a tarp and bring a boom box to transform a vacant lot in a discotheque. This illustrates very well the general behavior here, Cambodians don't let the lack of infrastructures stop things from happening.
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