Thursday, June 19, 2014

Fishy Foot Massages & Siem Reap

Our first full day in Siem Reap, Cambodia, we decided to take it easy and just wander around to get to know the place a bit. Siem Reap is the town closest to the Angkor Archaeological Park, so it's where all the tourists stay when they come to see the temples. The town has grown into a giant tourist trap - a staggering number of markets, restaurants, and hotels, plus all the little businesses that accompany those (such as laundry services, bicycle rentals, and tuk-tuk drivers). 

We happen to be here in the low season, so most of the shops are not busy and there are a LOT of tuk-tuk drivers just hanging around. This means that everyone is both bored and wants your business. (Hellobuysomesing?!?!) It also means that the folks with good personalities really stand out! We've met a couple of really funny tuk-tuk drivers that cracked us up. We've also heard, more than once, a bored shop keeper just say "hellosomesing?" That's pretty funny, too.  :-)

In SE Asia, massage places are everywhere and we've been taking advantage of the cheap services as often as possible. Before we arrived in Siem Reap we'd already had hour long foot massages, full body massages, Thai massage, shoulder massage, and hot stone massage! But something you see all over Siem Reap are these big fish tanks with signs that say "Please feed our hungry fish your dead skin." I had heard about these before and wanted to try it, and for a whopping $2 each we got to stick our feet in these tanks for as long as we could stand it. It tickles soooooooo badly!!! I couldn't even stand to put my whole foot in there for more than a second!  The fish are really aggressive.  Here's a short video for you:
http://vimeo.com/98551809

Cambodia is naturally beautiful with a tropical climate, lots of lush greenery. This is the walkway to our hotel room (!) and a view of the badass pool that's right outside our room.



This tree looks like it has dreadlocks.


And a few more photos from our wanderings around the town....

A temple we stumbled upon:




In the market - tasty snacks of fried tarantulas and grasshoppers. You'll be pleased to know that we did NOT try these...although we paid the little boy proprietor a dollar to let us take pictures and HE ate one for us!


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