Siem Reap -> Phnom Penh -> Ho Chi Minh (Saigon)



I started to plan for this trip somewhere in late May. I could not remember exactly when was it that I told Elaine I wanna travel to three different countries for 2009. As I just backed home from oz for a year, things were not really settling down well in last year as needed to spend lots of time to adjust and adapting back to malaysian lifestyle. So it ended up that we did not really do any travel for last year. So right after our April's Bangkok visit, I started to plan for my coming trip to Indo-china countries as well - Cambodia and Vietnam.

For this trip, I could not let Elaine to join me as she just came backed from her Korea trip early May. I don't really want her to finish all her annual leaves in the mid of the year. So she was omitted from this plan. I started to asked around for travel partner and after some considerable hunting time, I got my colleague Tang as my partner to indo-china. After some discussions with Tang, we concluded that we will be spending 9 days in total for this trip. Our first stop would be Siem Reap city, Cambodia. And from Siem Reap we will be heading south east towards Phnom Penh - Capital of Cambodia and finally crossing border to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh), Vietnam.

I planned to spend like 3 days at Siem Reap, just to focus on visiting the great Angkor temples (Angkor wat & Angkor Thom). As from what I read from other's travelogues, most of them were suggesting to spend one entire week just to visit bit by bit at Siem Reap as the whole ancient city is just too big. But due to limited holidays, I left with no choice but to cut the time short for Siem Reap. Mostly to focus on the great ancient city Angkor and night markets around the city.



To travel from Siem Reap to capital Phnom Penh, I am going for the water way - express boat operating between the two cities through the mother lake of Cambodia - Tonle Sap. As from my research, the ticket itself is costing USD 22 and it is doubled the price for land transport - bus is costing USD 12 only. The reason behind that I chose to travel through the lake is that I do not want to miss the great sight of the lake, where we can see the real life style of the Cambodians living by the lake. And I heard that the sun set by the lake side is such an amazing one but no luck for us as our travel time would be in the early morning. So sun rise maybe.



At Phnom Penh, I planned to spend 2 days only as nothing special about here. I only planned to visit places like the Royal Palace, Russian Market and their famous Killing Field which has thousands of innocent souls resting in peace over there.




To travel from Phnom Penh to Saigon (Crossing Cambodia-Vietnam border), I will go for a border crossing bus which is operated by Mekong Express Transportation co. It will take approximately 6 hours for the journey, and breakfast is provided too on board :p . Not bad the service considering that the fare is only USD 10.



The remaining days of my trip will be spent in Saigon on several places like Mekong Delta, Cu chi tunnel as well as some city sight seeing. Nothing has been planned concretely as I will take it more like a free and easy tour - go according to my mood on particular day. But one thing I will definitely go for it when I am in Saigon - Beef Noodle. I missed the Vietnamese beef noodle that I used to take every week when I was at Melbourne. It could easily be the best noodle soup on earth :p.

Finally as for budget wise, I will try to keep the spending as low as possible. I am targetting to keep it under RM1.3k. Mean while, stay tuned dear readers for the beautiful and lovely photos that I am gonna bring home from this coming Indo-china trip.