Lin and Sandy Grimwade's Blog: October 2026

After leaving Philadelphia on Thursday, 22 October in the evening we eventually arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second largest city, at lunchtime on Saturday, having lost half a day to jet lag. Our guide calls himself “Frank”, though his real name is Sey, and he is a gusher of detailed knowledge about Cambodian history, geography, religions, food, politics, culture etc.

Day 1 in Siem Reap: On Sunday morning Frank picked us up with his minivan and driver to start our tour of the temples of Angkor. Between the 9th and 15th centuries, the Khmer empire was the power in Southeast Asia. They were Hindus and/or Buddhists (it’s confusing) and the kings built hundreds of temples glorifying themselves and their families, trying to outdo their predecessors and hoping to attain immortality. Some of the temples are massive, like the famous Angkor Wat, others are beautifully decorated with beautiful murals carved in sandstone. All were pretty much lost in the jungle for centuries until they were rediscovered (and looted) by the French in the 19th century. Now they are the pride of Cambodia and the highlight for tourists. With a temperature of 90 degrees and high humidity, our 4-temple day was exhausting but fascinating. We don’t want to sound like a guidebook, so will avoid further descriptions, but we certainly had our fair share of crumbling and restored ruins, extraordinary stone murals hundreds of feet long, precipitous staircases, and the mother of all tropical downpours. As well as admiring 1000-year-old stonework, we were also treated to a parade of very well dressed Cambodians celebrating high school and college graduations, posing for photos on the bridge to Angkor Wat as the rain started to pour down. There were also a number of young soon-to-be married couples posing picturesquely among the ruins in formal traditional silk clothes. Our final temple of the day was at the end of a long climb up a hill where we were invited to stay and enjoy the sunset. Exhaustion and jet-lag got the better of us, and we returned to our hotel for 10 hours of deep sleep.

Day 2: Another day, another temple (or actually several). First, an even older Hindu temple built in the 9th century out of brick, but still tall and impressive. Local people are given jobs and uniforms, and help to keep the temples clear of vegetation, which grows back immediately if left unattended. We took a long drive into the countryside, with fewer rich paddies and more jungle, eventually stopping at the foot of a mountain for a long, strenuous hike up a very rocky path amid jungle vegetation, insects and birds, to another temple, but a very unusual one — stone carvings on a river bed, where water has been running over them for more than 1,000 years. There were many recognizable images of Hindu gods, as well as mythical snakes and dragons, and even more remarkable, over 1000 carvings of Shiva’s lingam (penis) in the rock of the river bed. Bathing in the river water was a believed to be a sure cure of infertility. A very wet pummeling under a waterfall for Sandy was cooling and refreshing, but no further physically enhancing effects were apparent. Our final temple of the day was to Banteay Srei, famous for intricate carvings in pink sandstone. It was a favorite target of French “collectors”, including the author and future French Minister of Culture, Andre Malraux, who was jailed for three years for trying to saw off a chunk of the temple — luckily he did not succeed.

That evening we went into the center of the town by tuk-tuk for Cambodian dinner in a nice restaurant and then visited the notorious “Pub Street” — a neon lit extravaganza of sensory overload: bars, discos, massage parlors, tacky Halloween decorations, and large crowds of overexcited teens — very uncharacteristic for a demure and laid back country. We lasted about 15 minutes before taking a tuk-tuk back to the hotel.

Day 3: Our last day in Siem Reap featured a lower level of temple visits on the way to the huge Tonle Sap Lake in the center of Cambodia. It is a very peculiar lake of about 1,000 square miles and 3 feet deep in the dry season, growing to over 6,000 square miles and 25 feet deep in the rainy season. It is the end of the rainy season just now so it is large, and several of the towns on the edge of the lake are in the water. We visited one town, Kampong Pfluk, by boat, and it was truly fascinating: Houses built on stilts, everyone travels by boat, including elementary school kids in immaculate uniforms paddling tiny canoes between home and school. The principal industries are fishing, handicrafts and catering to curious tourists. The lake is home to 200 species of fish, as well as innumerable birds, mammals and crocodiles. We had a lovely lunch in a local home stay house — all fish of course. And we visited a school where children were learning English, chanting and singing our favorite elementary school songs.

In the evening, another adventure: Two young men on off-road motor bikes got us kitted up with German-looking helmets and drove us on increasingly rough and rutted dirt trails into the countryside, passing and avoiding cows, dogs, waving children, chickens and vehicles to a country residence where we spent an idyllic hour with a glass of wine and tasty snack watching the sun set over the green rice fields. It was a lovely end to an interesting day, though the motorbike ride is something we do not plan to repeat.

Day 4: After our four nights in Siem Reap we set off for Battambang, Cambodia’s third city, and a major center of the former French Indochina. Our two days in Battambang were a real introduction to Cambodian culture and more recent history. North of the city is a mountain with a horrible history and a fascinating present. Local people have carved huge statues of Buddha into the cliff face of Phnom Sampov mountain — very impressive. Grim and awful is the cave at the top of the mountain where the Khmer Rouge murdered thousands of people during their brutal reign of terror in the 1970’s. There are memorials and Buddhist stupas commemorating the dead. After coming back down the mountain, we took our places to watch a natural wonder — literal millions of bats leaving a cave in the mountain in a never-ending flood, made visible in the setting sun as they set off for a night of feeding on insects over the rice fields. They are the improbably named “wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bats” — we were mesmerized.

I am trying to add photos, but it is not working well. More blog and hopefully photos in a few days.