Who: Trisha and Matthew Peterson of Thornton
Where: Entrance to Angkor Wat, Siem Reap
Best meal: All of the food we had on our trip in Southeast Asia was fantastic. In Siem Reap we recommend the Molorrop Cafe (across the river from the main part of town). The food was cheap and plentiful (a meal with dessert for under $3). You know it’s good if you see a lot of locals eating there. Siem Reap is growing fast, so a good, cheap meal is getting hard to come by and will require a bit of a search.
Best deal: Our room at the Ivy 2 Guesthouse was only $6 a night and had a private bathroom. Cheap guesthouses can be found all over town, so if you don’t like where you are, look around until you find a place that suits your needs.
Best time to go: If you want to visit a lot of temples, then you need to go during the dry season (December-April). The heat is pretty much always an issue, but December and early January will be the “coolest” months to travel.
Best travel tip: Get a guide for temple tours. All guides for the Angkor area are regulated and go through rigorous training to be certified. A guide with a driver and air-conditioned car will run around $45 a day. Our guide spoke excellent English and could answer any questions we had about the temples or even general questions about life in Cambodia. The guides know the best places to take pictures and will know the best times to avoid crowds. Having a guide added a lot of depth and understanding to what we were seeing and was worth every penny.
