Siem Reap embraces more than gorgeous ancient temples. The city is trendier than other regions of Cambodia. After two days of excessive temple dose, we wanted a relax day and explore the city center at ease.

The city’s center entails a huge variety of trendy hotels, street markets, crafty decorations, typical Asian cuisines, splendid spas, and local/countrywide tours for explorers.

Spending 3-5 days shall be enough to explore the best of this place including temples and the city charms. Since we managed and extra day in our itinerary for Siem Reap, we explored the below places:

An archaeological treasure for curious minds, Angkor national museum preserves and presents significant artifacts restored from various historical monuments of Cambodia, mostly belonging to Angkor era. They have very well organized a multi-lingual briefing hall and eight galleries exhibiting precious artifacts and pieces found at historical ruins. We were amazed going through the voluminous ancient statues of Hindu divinities, Bodhisattva made of stone and metal, ancient Sanskrit rock tablets along with enlightening narratives about an exceptional civilization during 1^st to 15^th centuries.

We could sense breakthrough of evidences about our own ethnicity that lingered on a distant land. The mere difference between Angkor art and Indian art is lack of jewelry in oldest statues and very slight variance in portrayal of a few deities. The stories and characters however, are all same and we enjoyed revisiting them. Coming athwart these proofs, we are left with a confounding sentiment that the so called ‘Hindu mythology’ must have authentic existence once plus impacted on a great measure.

It is best to start early to see around at your own pace and get the feel of it. The museum entrance fee is USD 12; they also provide audio guides for an extra USD 6.

Photography is not allowed here, we had to submit our camera near ticketing counter. It takes around 2 hours to explore everywhere. The premises host a small café across exit stairs, also, there is a chain of restaurant brands just outside museum.

Vivacious night life, buoyant music, chirpy Street, bar hopping, vibrant chow and high spirited like-minded rovers are like monograms at Pub Street. Pub Street is simply a party hub of Siem Reap which we could certainly not miss.

The best way to relish this slice of the city for us was to take a leisure walk in all the lanes and perceive what’s new to try. There are plenty of bistros & bars, retail shops full of crafty decors, jewels and outfits to discover your vibe. Accessories particularly are way too expensive here and they charge in USD, so cherry-pick wisely girls!

We had a captivating evening experience here and we regretted not spending our evenings here in the past two days, especially for superior and reasonably priced food and drinks compared elsewhere.