Streets of Siem Reap

New to tourism, which has really only kicked into gear over the last five or six years, this city has a quickly developing segment aimed at hosting to all of the backpackers and rich intellectual type stopping over on the way to Angkor Wat.  The city is split down the middle by the poluted and cloudy Siem Reap River with hostels and hotels scattered all over but the main tourist (barang) hangouts to the north.  The local 'Khmer' food available at restaurants in this area is really a bastardization of Thai and Vietnamese food. Not particularly tasty nor authentic, it often consists of Rahmen noodles and simple boiled chicken or pork. If you want to get yourself knee deep in real Cambodian food you need to find where all the tuk-tuk drivers eat and take a gamble on some food cooked up by one of the local family stalls outside their homes on the street. With no menus available and the no English spoken, you need to rely on the tuk-tuk drivers to get yourself set up, but they are happy to translate. It seems most get a big kick out of the fact that you are not eating a cheeseburger at the pub since most of the Westerners who travel through this neck of the woods are looking for snapshots of the temples and not necessarily a Cambodian experience.