Thursday, September 25, 2008

Tips and guides travel to Cambodia

I have not arrange my photos, but I think it is useful that I share my experience on tips and guides if anyone in future would like to visit Cambodia. And as a checklist for my future trips.

Water
Tour guide advise us to drink only bottled water. Avoid untreated water, ice made from untreated water and any raw fruit or vegetables that may have been washed in untreated water. I even saw light yellowish water (teh ais color) at rural areas which they wash their vegetables with. Bottle water is USD$1 for 2 500ml (Angkor Wat price). Buying 1 dozen of 500ml bottle water is only USD$1.50-$2. Cheaper for 8 of us. Drink lots of water to aviod dehyration.

Food
We took mostly food from restaurant. But we still took some local foods, street foods. We try not to eat those fresh vegetable and eat those ready cook foods only.

Take some comman medicine with you, like those panadol, oral rehydration solution (ORS), bandages, band-aids, stomach ache medicine (Poh cai yun).

Buy candies, biscuits, pencil, gums from your country. There will be alot of children asking for money and a good way to let them not bother you is giving them sweets. If you say you don't have sweets, they will ask for biscuits, pencil, gums. TS ask me to buy 1 pack from Malaysia and when you give them sweets, they feel delight and will smile to you. I should take all my pencils that I took from those hotel and give them too.

Insect and mosquito repellent

Change your currency to USD before going to Cambodia. Try exchange smaller notes of USD. Best smaller the $20. You can exchange Riels when you reach Cambodia but do not exchange riel too much. For Malaysia, buying using USD is cheaper compare to Riels.

Umbrella / Raincoat (For Wet season from May to October)

Sport shoe - to climb those rockly building at Angkor Wat.

Extra camera battery and extra memory cards. Most of our camera bateri was flat at the evening on the Angkor Wat Trip. Phnom Penh have lots of internet cafe, make sure you remember to take your cables for camera to PC connection.

Travel extension/converter for electronic device.

Remember to apply Sun block at least SPF30. I apply my moisturize with SPF15, but still have sun burn. Travel at Cambodia is extreemly hot. Especially walking at Angkor Wat at 10am to 1pm .

Tour guide
It is so meaningless that you visit somewhere without knowing the history or story of the building or heritage place. I think it is wise to have her/him explaining why we are visiting each paticular place. There have professional tour guide in speaking from Chinese, English, French, Korean, Japanese...etc.

Airport Tax
Keep USD25 to pay when you departure back to your country.

Visa
Malaysian does not need to apply visa to enter Cambodia

Next: Flying to Cambodia by Air Asia

1 comment:

Melissa said...

Thanks for the travel tips. Especially the airport tax. Often that is an unexpected tax that can be very expensive. I just found a newt ravel site baraaza.com. I think you might like it.

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